OF THE GRIMSBY TRAWL FISHERY. 361 
altogether. He had rather a hankering after the grounds south of 
the Reef, as the weather was moderating, but finally determined 
to iry the Great Fisher Bank, so we shaped our course northerly, 
taking a nght-haul by the way on the oozy ground to the east 
of the Dogger. Going on deck as the trawl came aboard, I was 
greeted with a sickening odour, apparently of rotten onions, but 
proceeding in reality from a vast mass of sponge and mud with 
which the net was choked. There were hardly any fish worth 
keeping, so we steamed straight on until the leadsman felt the Bank, 
and then proceeded to hunt about for what the skipper considered 
the most likely part at that season of the year. The Bank is of 
great extent, and navigation is not, perhaps, conducted by fishermen 
in the most exact manner, but in course of time we hit on the 
“Inner Shoal-water,’ and got decent, if not large, catches of 
haddock for some days. The Bank has only been regularly worked 
by trawlers during the last ten years or thereabouts, and its intri- 
cacies are known to comparatively few, of whom our skipper 
claimed, with apparent reason, to be one. He told me of several 
parts where the soundings are such as the Admiralty charts (accurate 
as far as they go) give no hint of, and of one spot in particular, 
known only to himself and a friend, where splendid bags of fish are 
always procurable, if you can only find it. On this occasion both 
coal-bunkers and fish-hold were too empty to allow. of any time 
being spent in what might be a fruitless quest after all, so we 
remained on much the same ground as long as we could get our 
fish, chiefly haddocks. Occasionally we got among the dense masses 
of lemon or scented weed (Flustra foliacea), which covers a 
great part of the Bank, and, especially when using the heavy ground- 
rope,* we brought cartloads of it aboard. Entangled among it 
were quantities of tiny cod ; and here too we got a few haddock, 
with the adult conformation, but smaller than any which had pre- 
viously been immortalised in alcohol. J was surprised to find the 
anemone Chondractinia digitata extremely plentiful; it was almost 
invariably attached to the shell of a living almond or smooth whelk 
(F. antiquus). The habits of naturalists have hitherto induced them 
to consider this a rather rare species. I brought many alive to the 
Cleethorpes aquarium, and was able to verify the correctness, as to 
colouration and certain other points, of the drawings and description 
given by Gosse, on the authority of J. Alder, the only actinologist 
who appears to have been acquainted with living examples. Other 
equally interesting actinians were met with, and I believe that the 
obscurity in which several genera are now involved might be 
* Some boats have the two trawls fitted with different ground-ropes—one rather light, 
designed for the capture of haddock ; the other weighted, for flat-fish. 
