AFFORD USEFUL BAITS. 29 



and, according to Pliny, the mullets which savoured of their 

 food were the most prized — " laudatissimi conchy lium sa- 

 piunt ;" and these, as saith honest Izaak Walton, "they 

 would purchase at rates, rather to be wondered at than 

 believed." 



I must here digress a little, to advert to the more direct 

 utility of the Mollusca in furnishing to the fisherman the 

 means of enticing to his snare the hapless victims of his art. 

 On every coast the shell-fish peculiar to it are extensively 

 employed for this purpose, but we may confine ourselves to 

 those used by our own fishermen. At Salcomb, on the coast 

 of South Devon, the Pholas dactylus is found in great abun- 

 dance, and is used with success. Many boat-loads of a river 

 mussel (Unio margaritiferus) are taken from the mouth of the 

 Ythen, a river not far from Aberdeen, and employed in the 

 fisheries of cod and ling established near Peterhead. The 

 clam (Pecten opercularis), and the great mussel (Modiola vul- 

 garis), are resorted to in other parts of the kingdom, and are 

 eagerly sought after as a bait for cod ; and you are aware that 

 many thousands of limpets (Patella vulgata) and of the com- 

 mon mussel (Mytilus edulis), are daily torn from the rocks, to 

 ensnare the common fishes of our coasts, and thus contribute 

 materially to add one more luxury to the tables of the rich, 

 and to give to the poor a cheap and wholesome diet. The 

 large whelk (Buccinum undatum), and a species of rock-shell 

 (Fusus antiquus), may likewise be enumerated among our 

 ordinary baits. At Portpatrick, where the former is called 

 the Hen Buckie, it is caught for this purpose in baskets, 

 " containing pieces of fish, which are let down in about ten 

 fathoms water, about a quarter of a mile off the harbour or 

 the old castle, and are drawn up daily to be emptied of the 

 shell-fish which have crept into them to feed on the dead fish. 

 Each shell serves to bait two hooks ; so that, reckoning the 

 number of hooks used by all the boats at 4,500, about 2,250 

 of these large shell-fish must be destroyed every time the lines 

 are shot, and probably not fewer than 70,000 every j^ear. 

 Yet the supply chiefly obtained from a space of no great 

 extent, seems to be even more abundant than ever."* 



The Americans, in their fisheries on the banks of New- 

 foundland, pre\'iously to the arrival of the Capelan, bait their 

 lines with the animal of a species of My a, which abounds on 

 several parts of the American coast, and which is peculiarly 

 acceptable to the cod, so that they prove much more success- 

 ful than the French who do not use it, but who, towards the 



* Wikon's Voyage, i. 53. 



