17S 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



" Lemon Soles " on the Sussex coast almost as 

 yellow as the fruit ; they are taken off Emsworth, 

 aud fetch a fancy price. We have yet another 

 Sole, Solea variegata (the "Variegated Sole"), 

 sometimes called the Thickback, Bastard, and Red- 

 back ; it is much smaller than the others, and of a 

 reddish-brown, mottled with black patches. All 

 these varieties of flat-fish that we have caught are 

 chiefly taken with the Trawl, and the number sold 

 in our markets is almost beyond belief. "Mr. May- 

 hew, in some of his investigations, found out that 

 upwards of 33,000,000 of Plaice were annually re- 

 quired to aid the London commissariat. But that 

 is nothing. Three times that quantity of Soles are 

 needed— one would fancy this to be a statistic of 

 shoe-leather, — the exact figure given by Mr. May- 

 hew is 97,520,000. This is not in the least exagge- 

 rated. I discussed these figures with a Billingsgate 

 salesman a few months ago, and he thinks them 

 quite within the mark."— (" Harvest of the Sea," 

 page 208.) In these our present operations we 

 have hauled in at every cast at least a score of 

 young flat-fish, varying from the size of a shilling 

 to three inches in length, for every eatable (we 

 don't say saleable) fish of the same genus. We may 

 say the same in the case of all other kinds, and may 

 even multiply the number of fry by ten in some 

 cases. There are people who maintain that the 

 Trawl is a most harmless instrument, and the re- 

 moval of the slender restrictions now placed upon 

 its use has even found advocates in high places ; 

 we declare the small-meshed trawls, and especially 

 the prawn-trawls, which suffer nothing to escape, to 

 be most ruinous and murderous engines of destruc- 

 tion : not only do they cause the death of millions- 

 of-millions of young fish of the most valuable kinds, 

 but they tear up and destroy the weed and cultch 

 amongst which they shelter and on which they feed ; 

 they spoil the feeding-beds. The fishermen, especi- 

 ally the old men who have retired, admit privately 

 that " the beds all about here have been scraped as 

 bare as the back of your hand," and will tell of the 

 bushels of fry killed in every night's work. "1 

 wonder that there's any fish left at all," said au old 

 Sea-Bear the other day ; but of this more anon ; 

 we have not space just at present. 



We have a " Sharp-nosed Eel," Anguilla acuti- 

 rostris. The habits of this creature and of eels in 

 general, their strange migrations, their overland 

 journeys, their marvellous instinct for finding their 

 way from inland freshwater stews to the salt sea, 

 are most interesting; but we cannot pause to con- 

 sider them. 



We have taken two species of Syngnutld, — viz., 

 S. Acus, the "Great Pipe-fish," aud S. ophidion, 

 the " Straight-nosed Pipe-fish." These and others 

 have been depicted in a former paper (p. 202, 

 Sept., 1870). We have seen that the Carp chews 

 the cud like an ox ; but here we have a fish that 



carries its young in a pouch like an Opossum or a 

 Kangaroo. The lady Acus extrudes two strings 

 of eggs : in the specimen before us there are thirty- 

 two in each string. The gentleman Acus is pro- 

 vided with two broad flaps (the left overlapping the 

 right), which run along the whole length of the 

 underside of his tail ; he carefully receives the eggs 

 from his lady love, and places them in parallel rows 

 beneath his apron-flaps, and not only carries them 

 until they are hatched, but dutifully nurses the 

 little ones after they are born. We commend the 

 Great Pipe-fish to the consideration of the "Women's 

 Rights Association," and if that Amazonian pha- 

 lanx have not yet decided upon the device to be 

 emblazoned on their shields and banners, we venture 

 to suggest, two Syngnathi entwined, as a suitable 

 and highly expressive emblem. 



Twenty-three varieties of fishes have been taken 

 in our net, not all in one cast, as, for the sake of 

 brevity, we have made it appear, but in ten or 

 twelve casts, occupying, together with the shifting 

 of ground, about fourteen hours. — viz., from twelve 

 o'clock noon until two hours after midnight, spent 

 on many banks and beds between the Warner 

 Shoal and the Mother Bank. We now pass on to 

 the Crustacea taken during the same cruise. The 

 smaller genera of these are found to be strangely 

 local, varying with every bed, leading us to conclude 

 that they are not much given to travelling. Pirst 

 we notice a fine Lobster, the common edible lobster, 

 Ilomarus vulgaris; and next, a " Scaly Galathea," 

 Galathea sqiiamifera. 



Fig. 9/. The Scaly Galathea [Galathea squami/era). 



At first sight one would put the Galathea down 

 as nearer a lobster than a crab; but it is a true 



