114 THE SEA-FISHERIES [PART I 



rule owned by those who sail them, and the conditions of employ- 

 ment with regard to them are of the simplest kind. They, and 

 many of the smacksmen, sell the fish which they catch, but in the 

 process of selling how much of the profit must find its way into 

 the pockets of the loud-voiced, corpulent fish-buyers, those middle- 

 men who are to be found wherever fish are landed? To those 

 w^ho care to investigate this economic question I recommend a 

 comparison of the prices they pay their fishmonger with the 

 tables of average values which are to be found in the reports of 

 the Inspectors of Fisheries. 



Finally we have the fishery for the truly benthic animals. 

 These are shrimps, prawns, crayfishes, crabs and lobsters, with 

 some other rarer Crustacea and the mollusca — the oysters, mussels, 

 cockles, periwinkles, whelks, &c. The crabs and lobsters are 

 caught in pots or creels, which are baskets of various shapes 

 and sizes, or in ironwork frames covered with strong netting. 

 The openings of these traps are funnel-shaped orifices into 

 which the unfortunate crustacean, which is attracted by the 

 piece of fresh or putrid fish inside the pot, finds its w^ay. 

 The creels are set well below low-water mark on a rocky shore, 

 are buoyed and moored, and are fished regularly. Prawns 

 (Palaemon), crawfish (Palinurus), whelks (Fusus and Buccimim) 

 are also caught by baited pots. Then we have the gatherers 

 of shellfish. All round our coasts multitudes of men, women 

 and children are engaged in gathering cockles, mussels and 

 periwinkles. The cocklers^ go down on the sands as the tide 

 recedes, sometimes singly, sometimes in parties accompanied by 

 a horse and cart, and they scoop out the shellfish fi;-om the sand 

 Avith a kind of toasting-fork, or rake them up with a small 

 garden rake fixed at the end of a long or short shaft. Then they 

 wash and riddle the molluscs to eliminate those which are below 

 the minimum legal size. They can work on the sands for a few 

 hours only during the twelve, but these include any of the twenty- 

 four except the darkest ; are endured in all kinds of weather, and 

 at all times in the year ; often mean hardship and discomfort 



^ There is a very good account of the cockle fisheries of Morecambe Bay in the 

 Pall Mall Magazine for September, 1896. If the reader can procure this it is well 

 worth reading. 



