MARINE FOOD FISHES 133 



At Billingsgate, seven hundred tons of fish are some- 

 times delivered in a day, but Billingsgate is a small 

 market compared with Grimsby and others. 



The smallest trawl used round our coast is the shrimp 

 trawl, with a spread of about twenty feet. If the reader 

 has never seen a shrimp trawl hauled, he should take the 

 first opportunity of doing so. Shrimps may or may 

 not be present in large numbers, but thousands of 

 other forms of marine life are sure to be caught, 

 including tiny soles, plaice, dabs, codling, whiting, 

 sand-eels, pipe fish, gobies, silvery sticklebacks, crabs, 

 star-fish, sea-urchins, and hosts of other interesting 

 objects representing both the annual and vegetable 

 kingdom. 



Before leaving the subject of nets, I should like to 

 refer to the difference between the beam and the otter 

 trawl. In the former the mouth of the net is kept open 

 by means of a beam, which may be as much as fifty 

 feet in length. This beam is raised two or three feet 

 from the bottom by means of stirrup-shaped iron con- 

 trivances at each end, the beam being attached to the 

 top of the stirrup, while the flat part or shoe of the 

 stirrup glides along the ground. Fastened to the 

 bottom of the stirrup is a length of stout rope half as 

 long again as the length of the beam. As the trawl is 

 dragged along, this rope, known as the "ground line," 

 naturally forms a semicircle. Along the beam is another 

 rope, the " head line," which is the same length as the 

 beam. To these two ropes is attached the netting of 



