would find difficult to save if it were not for these large eels, which are caught in great abundance, and sold at the rate of 2_d._ or 3_d._ per lb. The Manx men split the congers, and then salt them and hang them up to dry on their cottage walls, where they do not exactly contribute to perfume the gale. The Murry or Muræna differs from the common eel by the want of pectoral fins, and its beautifully-marked skin. It is said to live with equal facility in fresh or salt water, though generally found at sea, and it is as common in the Pacific as it is in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The only specimen on record as a British fish was caught by a fisherman of Polperro, October 8, 1834; its length was four feet four inches. The muræna has acquired a kind of historical celebrity from the strange fondness with which it was cherished by the Romans, who preserved large quantities of them in their numerous vivaria, as we do the lustrous gold-fish in the water-basins of our gardens. A certain Cajus Hirrius, who lived in the time of Julius Cæsar, was the first that introduced the fashion, which soon became a passion among the wealthy senators and knights of the imperial city, who used to deck their especial pets with all kinds of ornaments. The celebrated orator, Hortensius, the rival of Cicero, had a _piscina_ at Bauli, on the gulf of Baiæ, where he took great delight in a favourite murry that would come at his call and feed from his hand. When the creature died, he was unable to stop his tears; and another celebrated Roman, L. Licinius Crassus, appears to have had an equally tender heart, for he, too, wept at the death of his fishy darling. Vedius Pollio, a Roman knight, has even acquired through these fishes a scandalous renown, by causing now and then a slave that had been guilty of some slight offence to be cast alive and naked into their piscina, and amusing himself with the sight of the murrys lacerating and devouring the body. That this wretch was a friend of the Emperor Augustus harmonises but badly with the ideas of the urbanity of his court which we may have formed from the poems of Horace and Virgil. It is but fair, however, to the character of the emperor to state that he reprobated Pollio's cruelty, and ordered his fish-pond to be filled up. [Illustration: Ammodyte, or Launce.]