s and states of Europe. The sardines, however, are
largest and fattest in the month of September. A company of adventurers
have farmed the tunny-fishery of the king, for six years; a monopoly,
for which they pay about three thousand pounds sterling. They are at a
very considerable expence for nets, boats, and attendance. Their nets
are disposed in a very curious manner across the small bay of St.
Hospice, in this neighbourhood, where the fish chiefly resort. They are
never removed, except in the winter, and when they want repair: but
there are avenues for the fish to enter, and pass, from one inclosure
to another. There is a man in a boat, who constantly keeps watch. When
he perceives they are fairly entered, he has a method for shutting all
the passes, and confining the fish to one apartment of the net, which
is lifted up into the boat, until the prisoners are taken and secured.
The tunny-fish generally runs from fifty to one hundred weight; but
some of them are much larger. They are immediately gutted, boiled, and
cut in slices. The guts and head afford oil: the slices are partly
dried, to be eaten occasionally with oil and vinegar, or barrelled up
in oil, to be exported. It is counted a delicacy in Italy and Piedmont,
and tastes not unlike sturgeon. The famous pickle of the ancients,
called garum, was made of the gills and blood of the tunny, or thynnus.
There is a much more considerable fishery of it in Sardinia, where it
is said to employ four hundred persons; but this belongs to the duc de
St. Pierre. In the neighbourhood of Villa Franca, there are people
always employed in fishing for coral and sponge, which grow adhering to
the rocks under water. Their methods do not favour much of ingenuity.
For the coral, they lower down a swab, composed of what is called
spunyarn on board our ships of war, hanging in distinct threads, and
sunk by means of a great weight, which, striking against the coral in
its descent, disengages it from the rocks; and some of the pieces being
intangled among the threads of the swab, are brought up with it above
water. The sponge is got by means of a cross-stick, fitted with hooks,
which being lowered down, fastens upon it, and tears it from the rocks.
In some parts of the Adriatic and Archipelago, these substances are
gathered by divers, who can remain five minutes below water. But I will
not detain you one minute longer; though I must observe, that there is
plenty of fine samphire growing al