52

LIFE OF COLONEL MACERONI.

to be most delicious either fried or gently stewed (being cut |into pieces) with nothing but butter, pepper, and salt. No Janimal food is more easy of digestion, or more powerfullynutritious.* Another very good fish, abounding in themarket at Rome , but which is despised in England, is thedog fish, a small variety of the shark or squalus. It is ofa dove colour, about three feet long, and eats very muchlike sturgeon, but more delicate and tender. Of therenowned anchovy I shall speak by and by ■, as also of thesturgeon and the Roman lazy mode of taking them.

The angler who visits Rome , should take store of goodbarbie tackle and leads, and if he fish from a punt in theTiber , or in the Volturno, at Naples, in May and September,he will be sure to catch a sturgeon, now and then, whichwill go nigh to pull him into the water!

The often-proposed plan of laying dry that portion of thebed of the Tiber which runs through Rome , I will speak ofat the proper place. And for the benefit of any who shouldcontemplate the steam navigation of that river, especiallyfor the towing up of vessels from the sea, I will give theexact soundings of the whole extent from Ostia to Rome , inSummer and in Winter .

I dare say that many of my readers will join me inthinking, that it is a very inconvenient and absurd custom,for our architects, coiners, booksellers, in fine all who haveoccasion to affix a date, to make use of the Roman numeralsinstead of the Arabic cyphers. I was for some time puzzledto understand the origin and the rationale of the numericalsigns of the Romans, which are still so provokingly used onmost coins and public inscriptions in preference to theArabic cypher, which we can all read at a glance. I submit

* This moluscus insect ought, as was intended, to be called Shuttlefish, by reason of its internal and only bone exactly resembling aweaver’s shuttle.