Fish, though plentiful and various, is not fine in any part of the _Mediterranean_; and as to _thunny_, one surfeit would put it out of the bill of fare for life. On the whole, though at Palermo and Naples the pauper starves not in the streets, the gourmand would be sadly at a loss in his requisition of delicacies and variety. Inferior bread, at a penny a pound, is here considered palatable by the sprinkling over of the crust with a small rich seed (_jugulena_) which has a flavour like the almond; it is also strewn, like our caraway seeds in biscuits, _into_ the paste, and is largely cultivated for that single use. The _capsici_, somewhat similar in flavour to the pea, are detached from the radicles of a plant with a flower strikingly like the potatoe, and is used for a similar purpose to the jugulena. This island was the granary of Athens before it nourished Rome; and wheat appears to have been first raised in Europe on the plains of eastern Sicily. In Cicero's time it returned eightfold; and to this day one grain yields its eightfold of increase; which, however, is by a small fraction less than our own, as given by M'Culloch in his "Dictionary of Commerce." We plucked some _siligo_, or bearded wheat, near Palermo, the beard of which was eight inches long, the ear contained sixty grains, eight being also in this instance the average increase; how many grains, then, must perish in the ground! In Palermo, English gunpowder is sold by British sailors at the high price of from five to seven shillings per English pound; the "Polvere _nostrale_" of the Sicilians only fetches 1s. 8d.; yet such is the superiority of English gunpowder, that every one who has a passion for popping at sparrows, and other _Italian sports_, (complimented by the title of _La caccia_,) prefers the dear article. When they have killed off all the robins, and there is not a twitter in _the whole country_, they go to the river side and shoot _gudgeons_.