Another method is adopted in summer and winter alike. They run
across a stream a dam composed of brushwood and stones leaving a small
open space, and in this space they insert a weel; they then coop the
fish in towards this place, and draw them up in the weel as they
swim through the open space.
Shell-fish, as a rule, are benefited by rainy weather. The
purple murex is an exception; if it be placed on a shore near to where
a river discharges, it will die within a day after tasting the fresh
water. The murex lives for about fifty days after capture; during this
period they feed off one another, as there grows on the shell a kind
of sea-weed or sea-moss; if any food is thrown to them during this
period, it is said to be done not to keep them alive, but to make them
weigh more.
To shell-fish in general drought is unwholesome. During dry
weather they decrease in size and degenerate in quality; and it is
during such weather that the red scallop is found in more than usual
abundance. In the Pyrrhaean Strait the clam was exterminated, partly
by the dredging-machine used in their capture, and partly by
long-continued droughts. Rainy weather is wholesome to the
generality of shellfish owing to the fact that the sea-water then
becomes exceptionally sweet.
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