THE ATHERINA PRESBYTER. 123 



" dipping " threatened by the gudewife in the old reel ; and the 

 idea put us into good humour until tea and other fireside comforts 

 made us forget all the pelting of the pitiless storm. How the 

 remainder of winter and early spring may turn out meteorologically, 

 it is impossible to forecast with any confidence, but meantime our old 

 people, in their own opinion, at least, weatherwise and shrewd 

 quoad hoc, are gravely shaking their heads over what they deem 

 an unusual dearth of frost and snow in mid-winter. 



Our West Coast storms, if in one sense sometimes disagreeable 

 enough, rarely fail, however, to bring us a good thing in the shape 

 of hundreds of tons of drift-ware, which, gathered and spread on 

 the land, is found to be a valuable fertiliser. It is a labour, 

 besides, which falls to be done in a season when there is little else 

 to occupy the people's time, and saves an immense deal of trouble 

 when the spring comes round, for the land is ready for the plough 

 and the immediate reception of the seed, whatever the crop thus 

 saving at once the manure heap for purposes in which farmyard 

 manure is indispensable, and all the trouble of long cartage 

 afield. In collecting his share of a huge swathe of this drift-ware 

 the other day, one of our neighbours found a dead fish, quite 

 fresh and unmutilated, which being new to him, though a fisher- 

 man and sea-shore man all his life, he thought might be interesting 

 to us. He accordingly brought it to us, and to us also it was new, 

 and as such, of course, exceedingly interesting. We puzzled long 

 over it ere we satisfied ourselves that we had determined its 

 identity. It was a small fish, some six inches in length, and of 

 smelt-like shape and form and colouring, but it was not a smelt. 

 After some little trouble, we finally decided that it was a species 

 of atherine (Atherina) belonging to the Mugilidce, or mullet family. 

 Out particular specimen was the Atherina presbyter, a not un- 

 common visitor on some of the south of England shores, but so rare 

 in our seas that, as we have already said, we never saw a specimen 



