It is very evident that the life of one man would hardly suffice for the observation of all these facts even in a single class of animals; but, as I have said, there were writers before the time of Aristotle who provided for the tastes and tables of these fish-eating Greeks a most exquisite apparatus from the rivers and seas of Greece, especially in Sicily, which has been remarkable for its wealth ever since the reigns of Gelo and Hiero, and had surpassed the rest of Greece not only in its knowledge of nature, but in the art of poetry. There is a passage in Plato's "Gorgias," (sect. 156, p. 246, ed. Heind.) where mention is made of "Mithæcus, the author of a work on Sicilian cookery, and Sarambus, the publican. One furnished the best of food, the other the best of wine." That the art of choosing and preparing food for the table was treated of in this book we may conclude from the use of the word ὁψοποιΐα, which the Greeks especially used to signify the kinds of fish used for food. A passage from this book on the manner of cooking the fish called tenia is quoted by Athenæus, who makes the title of this book ὀψαρτυτικὸν, vii. p. 282, and xii. p. 506. We cannot accurately ascertain the age of Mithæcus. The most ancient author of such a book that we can call to mind is Epicharmus, a Sicilian poet and physician, from whose fragments, collected by Athenæus, we may certainly conclude he was acquainted with the nature of aquatic animals. To this class we may, in the first place, refer those passages which are extracted from the drama called the Marriage of Hebe, or the Muses, and not only teach us the nature of fishes, but also the manner of procuring and cooking them. A learned writer in the "Literary Ephemeris" of Jena, 1810, (Nos. 156, 157,) attempted to collect all these and reduce them to order. There remain, however, many more passages which the conjectures of the most learned could hardly amend or explain, from the corruption of the text by librarians and the variety of Sicilian names. And before the time of Epicharmus, Ananius, an Iambic poet, nearly contemporary with Hipponactus, an Ionian poet, composed, among other poems, a similar work on cooking fish, as we learn from a passage extracted by Athenæus, (vii. p. 282.) After Epicharmus there was Terpsion, a Sicilian, who was the first to write a gastrology, in which he taught his disciples from what kind of food they ought to abstain. He is mentioned by Clearchus Solensis, a disciple of Aristotle, in his work de Paræmiis, in "Athenæus," (viii. p. 337.)