JUNE, 1 88 1. 



changing front, we " herded " the shoal towards the 

 shore, and managed to direct them towards a stream 

 that enters the little bay, and whose waters were now 

 sufficiently brackish before the rising tide. Everything 

 had gone gaily hitherto, and a fine shoal of many hun- 

 dred fish had been ushered into a manageable position ; 

 but on shouting for our assistant on shore to bring 

 a hand net, our instructions were misunderstood by the 

 Gaelic-speaking individual addressed, and only a "graip" 

 was the result of a prolonged absence at our boat-house. 

 But no time was to be lost in a second visit, and with a 

 rush we drove a miserable fragment of the shoal into a 

 corner, and captured them with our hands. There they 

 darted about in the little water courses like, flashes of 

 living silver, and as they came out of the water and 

 glanced in the sunlight, we thought no more beautiful 

 creatures ever danced over the land or through the 

 water. Alas for the eventualities to which investigation 

 is subject ! The delicate beauties were sent to the cot- 

 tage, where they reached the kitchen, and, before a speci- 

 men could be secured for more careful examination, they 

 were actually all "gutted" by our extra-careful domestic ! 

 They proved to be sand smelts (atherind). 



From some fathoms we bring up the spawn of the 

 various nudibranchs, with almost all the inhabitants of 

 the littoral, too, represented, although these are commonly 

 deposited and matured in shallow water. The dredge 

 in some localities comes up actually over-weighted with 

 great pudding-looking ascidians, that must be spread 

 thickly over the bottom of the sea. To the more tough- 

 skinned of these many young of various creatures, oysters, 

 serpulae, barnacles, and various zoophytes are found 

 affixed, and everything seems to be a parasite on every- 



