(B) The taxes (or revenues) obtained in the Ptolemaic times, ἰχθυηρά, were probably a Government monopoly. They were divided into (_a_) a tax on fishermen of one quarter of the value of the fish caught (τετάρτη ἁλιέων), (_b_) the profits of sale of fish at prices higher than those paid for them direct to the fisherman. In the Roman period we find τέλος ἰχθυηρᾶς δρυμῶν, or a rent from marshes deep enough at the time of the inundation to contain fish and shallow enough at other times to grow papyri and marsh plants. Leases for fishing and selling papyri, etc., brought good returns. But these returns must be distinguished from other revenues derived from the industry, _e.g._ the fisheries of Lake Mœris, and from a tax paid by the fishermen, both of which seem to correspond with the Ptolemaic “fourth part.” On the other hand the φόρος, no doubt, was a tax paid by fishermen for the right of fishing, or for the use of boats in waters owned by the temples.[861] The Net, in the marsh country, was not only the most lucrative “engine of encirclement,” but also a double duty paid. In other parts the inhabitants passed their nights upon lofty towers to escape the gnats, but in the marsh land (Herodotus continues), “where are no towers, each man possesses a net instead.[862] By day it serves to catch fish, while at night he spreads it over the bed in which he is to rest and creeping in goes to sleep underneath.” While struck by the resemblance to Goldsmith’s article of furniture, “A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day,” we are forced once more to “scrat head,” and very hard. Imagination reels before the mesh of a Net, capable alike of catching a marketable fish and denying a gnat! Fish intended for immediate use were usually dressed on the boat and quickly dispatched to market; the rest of the catch was opened ashore, split, salted, and hung to dry in the sun. Pictures[863] of all these operations, and examples of splitting knives, survive. Splitting in the earlier eras, for some reason, ran, not sheer down the back, but always rather to one side or other. Promptness of curing in a hot climate like Egypt was all important. Diodorus, indeed, tells us that practically all fish were at once pickled or salted, a statement confirmed by Julius Pollux’s mention of the Egyptian _tariché_, especially that from Canopus, being exported[864] far and wide, certainly to Palestine, whither “the Egyptian fish came in baskets or barrels.”[865] Prices of wheat, honey, fish and other wares occur in Spiegelberg’s work,[866] but no attempt is made by him (as far as I know) to correlate the prices in ancient and modern Egypt.