172 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



some matters of detail, but concludes with, — 

 " Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the poison 

 apparatus of Trachinus is homologous with that of 

 Thalassophryne, only in the latter it is developed to 

 as great a perfection as in the fang of the viper." 

 He is of a peculiar light yellow-grey, dashed with 

 a reddish tinge about the back, the lower parts 

 being much lighter, and gradually passing into 

 white ; the fins are brown, the caudal being edged 

 with black, and the first dorsal webbed with a jet- 

 black membrane, which happily presents a decided 

 means of instantaneous identification. He is one 

 of the Perch family, an uncomfortable set to handle ; 

 it is as well to remember that they are called Acan- 

 thopterygii (aKavdog, a spine, and irrepvyiov, a fin), 

 from the stiff spines which constitute the first rays 

 of the dorsal fin. . 



The "Great Weever," or " Sting-Bull,"— the 

 " Sea-Cat " of the coast of Sussex,— is a very much 

 larger fish : " its food is the fry of other fishes, and 

 its flesh is excellent"; nevertheless, it is generally 

 thrown overboard as worthless; and if it thus 

 escapes with life, it lives only to destroy the more 

 valuable sorts. 



What is all this loud chorus of croaking and 

 smacking of lips, suggestive of the second plague 

 of Egypt combined with a lot of greedy snobiculi 

 let loose upon strawberries - and-cream ? These 

 sounds are all produced by the sucking and gasping 

 of the wide-gaping mouths and labouring gills of a 

 couple of dozen of spiny horny-headed prisoners. 

 Lift that one up by the tail, or rather by the caudal 

 fin ; formidable and forbidding as his appearance 

 is, he cannot jump and strike like the harmless- 

 looking Weever ; — this is Coitus bubalis, the Long- 

 spined Father-lasher ; the boys often call it the 

 "Bull-head," confounding it either with the true 

 saltwater "Bull-head," or with the freshwater 

 species of that name, alias the Miller's-thumb. The 

 French call these croakers, Grogneurs, Coqs-de-mer, 

 and Coqs-bruyans ; the Germans call them See-murre, 

 or Sea-grumblers. Fisherfolk in the Mediterranean 

 once had a belief that their hoarse notes foretold 

 dirty weather : " ils repeient ce bruit a l'approche 

 des tempetes." 



Cottus will live for an hour or two out of the 

 water, not because he has wide gills, but because 

 he is a ground fish ; " the surface-swimmers, with a 

 high standard of respiration, a low degree of mus- 

 cular irritability, and a great necessity for oxygen, 

 die almost immediately when taken out of the 

 water, and have flesh prone to rapid decomposition : 

 on the contrary, those fish that live near the bot- 

 tom have a low standard of respiration, a high 

 degree of muscular irritability, and less necessity 

 for oxygen; they sustain life long after they are 

 taken out of the water, and their flesh remains 

 good for several days : carp, tench, eels, the dif- 

 ferent sorts of skate, and all the flat-fish may be 



quoted." Now this tenacity of life in the Cottus, 

 the Weever, and a dozen others like them, is, com- 

 bined with our stupid way of dealing with them, a 

 commercial calamity ; for while the young of most 

 of the valuable food-fishes die almost immediately 

 they are taken out of the water, and, unless of 

 marketable size, are thrown overboard dead, and 

 wasted, these voracious poachers, regarded as un- 

 clean by the people of our islands, are thrown back 

 alive into the sea to destroy by the million the fry 

 of their betters. 



We are wrong in treating the Cottus as a worth- 

 less thing. " In Greenland it attains a large size, 

 and is in such great request, that it forms the 

 principal food of the natives : the soup made from 

 it is said to be agreeable as well as wholesome." 

 Caught by the score at every <c heave " of the 

 trawl, and by hundreds of tons in the course of the 

 year, yet never eaten in this densely-peopled 

 country, where meat is so sadly dear and there are 

 so many half-filled and all but empty mouths ; 

 caught by millions, and good for food, yet put back 

 into the sea as useless ; our ignorance or prejudice 

 combining with their natural tenacity of life to 

 preserve them only to do mischief. Here is a 

 blunder in our piscine economy to be put to rights. 

 It is said that once upon a time the good people of 

 Looe, down in Cornwall, ate all their rats to make 

 sure of getting rid of them ; and quite recently the 

 abominable grubs of the cockchafer, the arch-pest 

 of French horticulture, became a fashionable dish 

 in la belle France. We do not envy the west- 

 country folk their rat pies, and we are content to 

 leave Parisian gourmands to feast alone upon vers 

 blancs; but here we have a clean-feeding fish, "agree- 

 able as well as wholesome," which, together with a 

 dozen other kinds at present wasted, and worse 

 than wasted, might be converted into nutritious 

 soups and stews, or such savoury compounds as 

 Thackeray found in a snug restauraut in the " Rae- 

 neitve des Petits-champs." 



" This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is, 

 A sort of soup, or broth, or brew, 

 Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, 

 That Greenwich never could outdo ; 

 Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffern, 

 Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace ; 

 All these you eat at Terre's tavern, 

 In that one dish of Bouillabaisse." 



Here is another of the same race, with shorter 

 spines about the head, and three hooklike recurved 

 spines on the snout; the body is octagonal and 

 covered by eight rows of strong plates ; the chin is 

 furnished with several minute cirrhi. This is a mail 

 clad Cottus, the " Armed Bull-head," " Pogge," or 

 " Sea-poacher." The scientific name seems to be a 

 corruption of a(nr1Sr}-(p6poQ, shield-bearing. "Its flesh 

 is good and firm," but prejudice rejects it as unfit for 

 food, and reckless ignorance preserves it to poach 



