GREY MULLET. 



203 



and before the limits of its range are straitened, and when 

 even the end of the net might be passed, it is its common 

 habit to prefer the shorter course, and throw itself over 

 the head-line, and so escape ; and when one of the company 

 passes, all immediately follow." 



" This disposition is so innate in the Grey Mullet, that 

 young ones of minute size may be seen tumbling themselves 

 head over tail in their active exertions to pass the head- 

 line. I have even known a Mullet less than an inch in 

 length to throw itself repeatedly over the side of a cup 

 in which the water was an inch below the brim." 



" Mullets frequently enter by the floodgate into a salt- 

 water mill-pool at Looe, which contains about twenty 

 acres ; and the larger ones, having looked about for a turn 

 or two, often return by the way they had come. When, 

 however, the turn of the tide has closed the gates and pre- 

 vented this, though the space within is sufficiently large for 

 pleasure and safety, the idea of constraint and danger sets 

 them on effecting their deliverance. The wall is examined 

 in every part ; and when the water is near the summit, 

 efforts are made to throw themselves over, by which they 

 are not uncommonly left on the bank to their own destruc- 

 tion." 



" When, after being surrounded by a net, two or three 

 have made their escape, and the margin of the net has 

 been secured and elevated above the surface to render 

 certain the capture of the only remaining one, I have seen 

 the anxious prisoner pass from end to end, examine every 

 mesh and all the folds that lay on the ground, and at last, 

 concluding that to pass through a mesh, or rend it, afforded 

 the only though desperate chance of escape, it has retired 

 to the greatest possible distance, which had not been done 

 before, and rushed at once to that part which was most 



