64 CONGERS AT FOLKESTONE. 



The following notes on congers I have published in 

 my Curiosities of Natural History , second series, Bentley, 

 1875 : — The first sight I got of the congers at Folke- 

 stone was in a "lug sail boat," which ran in at high 

 tide in company with a fleet of trawl-boats, laden with 

 congers, or rather marine boa-constrictors. When the 

 boat stranded, the men threw them out on the shore 

 one by one, and there they lay, just able to wriggle, 

 and to gasp with their formidable mouths. Some of 

 them were of a pale white colour, but the majority were 

 sprinkled here and there with nut-brown markings, 

 making them look much more snake -like than when 

 hung up in Billingsgate. The crowd gathered round. 

 '' Who will buy this parcel of congers ? " said the fisher- 

 man, picking up a stone, and standing wdth the congers 

 all placed before him. The biddings went on fast. 

 £1 5s. was bid for the lot, in number twenty-one, large 

 and small ; down went the stone, and the purchaser 

 hastily pitched the great brutes into " kittens," as they 

 call the fish-baskets, and in twenty minutes the congers 

 passed me in the open luggage -van of the train on their 

 road to London. These w^ere " Ness congers," and were 

 caught on a " long line." 



When the long line is hauled the hooked congers 

 sometimes (if they are big ones) '' yawls on the lines ; " 

 sometimes ''they comes up quietly;" at other times 

 "they hangs like a log of wood;" but they nearly 

 always " makes a cmd with their tail, so as to hang 

 back in the water ; " when in the boat they try to get 

 out by "clinging their tails over the side." (I have 

 observed this same fact w4th fresh-w^ater ells.) To get 

 them into the boat the fishermen have an enormous 

 "heal," or " prule," i.e., a gaff-hook. When in the 

 boat " the congers are terrible things to bite, sure-ly." 



