with his tail and thus, lying hidden, manages to escape
the meshes.'
  1   difficulty of catching fish has always been a source of lamentation
to
anglers. Christian fishermen, however, may console themselves by considering
a discriminating fish mentioned by Edward Webbe in his Rare and most Wonderful
Things. 'In the land of Syria', he says, 'there is a river that no Jew can
catch any
fish in at all, and yet in the same river there is a great store of fish
like unto salmon
trouts. But let a Christian or a Turk come thither and fish for them and
either
of them shall catch them in abundance.'


MU L LU 5, the Red Mullet, is called that because it is
soft (mo//is) and very tender. They say that lust can be
cooled by eating it,2 and they also dull the eyesight.
People who frequently consume mullet smell of fish. If
a Mullus is drowned in wine, those who drink the stuff
afterwards get a loathing for wine-drinking.
  2 The Mullet, according to Juvenal, was used to punish adulterers-but,
if
our text can be trusted, perhaps it was intended to cure them~


M U G I L, the Grey Mullet, is so named because it is
very nimble (mu/turn agi/is). For, when it perceives that
the snares of the fishermen have been set, it instantly
turns round and leaps over the net, so that you can watch
it flip through the air.~

So you see there are innumerable habits and numberless
species of fish. Some beget from an egg, as is the case
with the mottled large ones which we call trout, and these
entrust the egg to the waters for hatching. The water
animates and creates and still carries on the work con-
fided to it, as if by the Universal Law, for it is a kind of
fondling mother to all living things. Others, such as the
mighty whales, dolphins, seals and the rest of that sort,
   Mullet fishermen will know that the creatures are very shy and do have
very
tender mouths.

                          203