KOBiNsoN Crusoe's experience of pouts. 193 



them heavy whiting do bite * logie ' dull like ; hut it's 

 a curious thing as any fish will eat boiled cabbage or 

 boiled onions, and they comes about the ships at Spit- 

 head for it. I Imows of seven or eight wracks hereabouts 

 where I fishes. The Boyne is about as good as any 

 of them. She was a fine ship was the Boyne. She 

 catched fire at Spithead (I think it was in 1798), and 

 all her arms was shotted ; they went off one after the 

 other right among the fleet. Her magazines was full 

 of powder, so they set her adrift, and she took the ground 

 in five fathom of water, just at the edge of the Horse 

 Bank, and there she fired away 'till she bio wed herself 

 up, and she is now the wonderfuUest ^Tack about here. 

 There's a wonderful sight of timber, and a wonderful 

 sight of fish about her, and they always runs good. I 

 fishes at her all the year round, and yet there's always 

 fish, though sometimes you can't get a smell out of them 

 much less a bite. I once catched a hundred dozen of 

 pouts in three bits of tide, and some of them was very 

 fine pouts. The young flood is the time to catch 'em. 

 Then they stops nearly an hour, and then comes in the 

 whole body of the tide, but there ain't half so many 

 pouts about as there used to be : it's the town gas as 

 kills the fish. If a porx)oise was to swallow one bladder 

 of gas as big as a halfpenny as it comes out of Ports- 

 mouth harbour, he'd turn the turtle in a minute ; it's 

 real poison is gas." 



^ ^^..^,^ REMORA. 



ArMcaninini Cclades. Echeneidte. 



In the Kemora Suckers, the sucking apparatus is placed 

 on the crown of the head, in the form of a large 

 oval shield, by means of which the fish are able to 

 attach themselves firmly rilongside of other fishes, or 



14 



