STUPIDITY OF FISHERMEN. 289 



especially during summer, wlien tide-hunting is neces- 

 sarily poor, and only by dredging and trawling can he 

 hope to get a good stock of animals. Always go where 

 there are fishermen, that you may have the benefit of 

 their aid. They may bring you what you would never 

 find. It is true there are two sources of difficulty in 

 your way : the first is the almost impossibility of 

 making them understand that you can set any value on 

 things they are accustomed to throw away ; the second 

 is, that when you have so tutored them that they know 

 what you want, they are strangely backward in their 

 supplies. Money is of course the only cogent argu- 

 ment ; yet even money moves them but slowly. They 

 go out day after day, staying out all night, and return 

 often without a shilling's worth of fish ; yet although 

 you offer to pay them for oyster-shells and weeds as for 

 fish, they cannot easily be induced to throw this " re- 

 fuse '' of their nets into a bucket, instead of throwing 

 it overboard again. They promise to do so, but you 

 generally wait in vain. At Tenby, in spite of urgent 

 entreaties and liberal promises, only one Loligo was 

 brought me; at Scilly, nothing; at Gorey, in spite of 

 my being on the best terms with fishermen whom I had 

 employed, and with whom T had gone trawling, five 

 weeks passed before a bucket of refuse was brought 

 me.* Two words — pertinacity and liberality — sum up 

 the whole art of gaining this desirable result; when 



* SWAMMEEDAMM {Bibel cUr Natur, p. 34) makes the same complaint 

 of the Dutch fishermen, and justly attributes to it the long continuance 

 of our imperfect knowledge of marine marvels. 



T 



