THE BASS, BREAMS, AND RED MULLET 119 



salmon hardly show more intimate acquaintance with such 

 characters of the water as they can turn to account than does 

 a large bass. Every movement of the fish in avoiding the 

 shallows or heading for the posts of a bridge points to previous 

 knowledge of the water, and as this is observed quite early 

 in the season, it does not seem unreasonable to conclude that 

 the bass has been in that estuary the previous year, and 

 remembers the conditions. The very small fish show, as 

 might be expected, a lack of experience and cunning, taking 

 the bait with a headstrong indifference to the risks. 



Another remarkable fact remains to be recorded in 

 the life-history of these bass shoals, and that is their 

 avoidance of the river on certain days and their preference 

 for the rocks just outside the bar. As an extended series of 

 journal entries entirely fails to connect this avoidance of fresh 

 water with any particular condition of weather or temperature, 

 their conduct can only be associated with irregular food 

 supplies. The hatching out of some fish or other marine 

 animal among the rocks might conceivably keep the bass in 

 the vicinity ; but there, at any rate, they remain on certain 

 days, hot or cool, wet or fine, calm or boisterous. An easy 

 explanation of this remarkable behaviour would present itself 

 if we found that the little brit, the chief food of estuarine 

 bass, also kept out in the open water on the same ciays. Actual 

 observation, however, has shown that this is not the case, for 

 on two or three separate occasions, when the bass were playing 

 outside and to all appearance absent from the river altogether, 

 the river was teeming with brit, some of which, captured by 

 tying a piece of mosquito netting in the landing-net, proved 

 to be young sand-eels and apparently little rocklings of some 

 species. The absence of bass, however, from the same 

 grounds was obvious not less from the fact of the baits being 

 untouched than from the listless, leisurely manner in which 

 the brit drifted past the boat, instead of, as usual, leaping 

 and hurrying in frantic escape from their enemies. Sometimes 



