THE FISH OF BOUILLABAISSE 



they do is to catch and sell the fish as the sea, in certain 

 places, makes provision. 



All over the Mediterranean, on the coast of Provence 

 and elsewhere, the shore, when it is not covered with 

 mud, supports at a depth of from ten to fourteen feet, 

 sometimes forty feet, the growth of a peculiar plant, 

 the grass-wrack, which flourishes and multiplies near 

 the algae. These vegetables, belonging to the class 

 of monocotyledons like grasses or palms and far 

 surpassing the algae as regards complexity of organiza- 

 tion, are able to live beside them in the salt water 

 without ever reaching the air. They make up a family 

 in this class, that of the Zosterace<e, the Provencal 

 species of which is technically known as Posidonia 

 caulini Koenig. In all favourable places this plant 

 covers the bottom, buries its root-stocks in it, and 

 outspreads vertically in the water its long flat green 

 ribbony leaves, forming with them a sort of submarine 

 pasture affected by changes of season, just like the 

 vegetables which grow on land. Under the water, it 

 comes up in spring, flowers, then the leaves lengthen 

 and are dropped in autumn, just like those of the 

 trees in our forests, becoming green again the following 

 spring. These dropped leaves, driven always nearer 

 to the shore by the waves, accumulate in the coves 

 by the water's edge, and there dry, forming thick 

 carpets on the shore which are used for various purposes. 

 Yellowish balls of massed filaments are produced by 

 the action of the waves felting the hairs and rhizomes. 

 The vegetation of the sea bottom, conserved by the 

 salt water, is prevented from rapid decomposition and 

 so devoid of the objectionable elements involved in 

 that process. 



The fishes that are used for bouillabaisse live in 

 these plantations of grass-wrack, just as land animals 

 live in bushes and thickets. Few and far between 

 when these plantations are small in extent, in those 

 districts, for example, where the shore rapidly falls 



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