The rich hues of the _palamide_, in shape and colour not unlike our mackerel, but with longitudinal, in place of transverse, green bands, were beautiful objects as they were raised all iridescent in their freshness out of the water, and transferred to the side boat. We also noticed in the net one or two immense fish, in shape like rounded parallelograms, with tough shagreen hides, goggle eyes, and two immense leathery fins placed at the lower part of the abdomen. They kept flapping these valves up and down, but not offering to strike, though lugged out by a hook. The haul was a good one, each fish worth a ducat; and had they, in fact, been at this price converted into coin at once, the money would have made no mean show in the bottom of the net. The treacherous _camera della morte_ was emptied quickly, and in one minute more, down it went again into the depths below. We should have mentioned a singular practice of the fishermen of the present day in Sicily, to _pat_ the thunny while he is in the net, as you pat a horse or dog: They say it makes him docile. This done, they put their legs across his back, and _ride_ him round the net room, an experiment few would practise on the dolphin's back, at least in these days; yet Aulus Gellius relates that there was a dolphin who used to delight in carrying children on his back through the water, swimming out to sea with them, and then putting them safe on shore! Now, _but for the coins_, taking the above custom into consideration, one might have supposed the ancients' _delphinus_ to have been the modern _thunny_. THE FISH MARKET.