390 Notes on Sport and Travel iv 



the hand-line. They are a noble fish, but not so 

 much handsomer than our own sea bream. By-and- 

 bye come a shoal of silvery gray mullet, sparkling 

 and flipping and splashing, making the water look 

 like molten silver rapidly stirred ; more play than 

 feed, they seem to be practising how to jump over 

 the line. At Naples they put down a long line 

 quietly, and connect the two ends ; then they float 

 another net flat on sticks round the first, and on 

 kicking up a bobbing inside, my lively friends leap 

 out of one and into the other, whence they are 

 picked by a man who rows round in a boat. 



My Catalan deplores the absence of his mullet 

 tackle ; he says he uses bread-crumb (what I fancy 

 the cockneys call paste), and that they bite freely. 

 I have tried every sort of dodge with them in the 

 Arun, which swarms with them, but I could never get 

 them to take. They would give grand sport if they 

 did, for I have often seen them six or seven pounds 

 weight. In spite of the proverb, Arundel mullet are 

 very poor eating indeed, and so are almost all the 

 gray mullet I have tasted. I have, however, eaten 

 excellent ones at Naples, which I suspect come from 

 that paradise of fishes, Messina. I wish some one 

 would write a comprehensive book about the Medi- 

 terranean fishes. Why does no one do for them 

 what Gould and others do for the birds ? As far as 

 Europe is concerned, they are far more beautiful, and 

 there must be unnumbered points of interest about 

 them still unguessed at. Here is one fellow which 



