cal practitioner
and collector in natural history, from whom we learn that there are
eight different species of dog-fish (_Squalus_) along the Syracusan
coast. This animal, to the popular fame of whose injurious exploits we
had hitherto yielded unabated confidence, appears fully to justify his
West Indian character. An "ancient mariner" told us, that full forty
miles from Syracuse, a shark, which had been following him for a long
time, thrust his head suddenly out of the water, and made a snap at him;
and if the boat had not been a _thunny_ boat, high in the sides, there
is no saying how much of him might have been extant! A pair of trousers
drying in the sun over the side of the boat should have small attraction
for a shark, but he _took_ them on _speculation_. At one of the
principal thunny fisheries near Catania, the fishermen have fixed upon
poles, like English kites on a barn-door, _pour encourager les autres_,
two immense sharks' heads as trophies--the jaws at full gape, exhibiting
four sets of teeth as sharp as harrows, and as white and polished as
ivory. They always wish to decline any dealings with this formidable
foe, though his flesh is in repute in the market, and he weighs from two
thousand five hundred to four thousand pounds. But Syracuse has no
reason to complain of scarcity, or to eat shark's flesh from necessity;
most of the _Scomber_ family,--the _alatorya_, the _palamida_, and a
fine gray-coloured fellow which the fishermen call _serra_, frequent her
coast; then there is the _Cefalo_--the ancient _mugilis_, our gray
mullet--and the sea-pike, _Lucedimare_, whose teeth and size might well
constitute him lieutenant to the dog-fish,--all these came to table
during our stay; but we did not meet with one very superior fish known
to the ancients as the _Lupus_, (_labrax_ of the Greeks,) which abounds
when in season, and is known in every comfortable _menage_ along the
Sicilian coast; his Linnaean name is _sparus_. On the shore are to be
picked up occasionally two small kinds of shells _peculiar_ to Sicily,
of which our intelligent acquaintance is so obliging as to give us
specimens. We never saw or heard of a firefly in Sicily. Professor Costa
of Naples, though he doubted the fact of there being none, had never
seen any in his frequent entomological trips to that island. This
beautiful insect, so common about Florence and Rome, and in central
Italy, is extremely rare about Naples; nor does this seem to be fro