126 MODERN SEA FISHING 



gradually died away, and it became a piebald yellow and purple 

 creature. Then I thought I would put it in a prawn net and 

 take it home, whereupon it straightway turned the most ghastly 

 livid colour imaginable, assuming the pallor of death. I had 

 hopes of keeping this strange thing alive, and presented it with 

 a tenement in the shape of a bucket of salt water ; but it received 

 so many pokes and touches from various people to bring out 

 those chameleon-like changes, that during the night it gave up 

 the ghost. 



Of much greater importance from an angler's point of view 

 is the common squid or calamary (Loligo vulgaris}. It is some- 

 times called the pen-and-ink fish, on account of its ink bag, 

 and the delicate elongated shell which is found within it. The 

 octopus has a similar shell, these two being in this respect very 

 different from the cuttle, which possesses inside it the stout 

 shield-shaped, calcareous mass so often found on the seashore. 

 In aged squid are sometimes found more than one shell. These 

 fish, of which there are about nineteen species altogether, 

 abound off Cornwall. One of the most remarkable is the 

 Sagittated Calamary which the sailors call the flying squid, or 

 sea arrow. By filling itself with water and rapidly expelling it, 

 the flying squid projects itself with great force above the surface 

 of the sea, sometimes falling on the decks of ships. It is the 

 Ommastrephes sagittatus that is so largely used as a bait for 

 cod by the Newfoundland fishermen, who catch these curious 

 creatures in great numbers by means of a jigger a cone-shaped 

 piece of lead from which about half a dozen hooks project. The 

 squid catchers go out in small craft about sundown, each boat 

 often coming in with a hundred or more of these valuable baits. 



Calamaries of enormous size are caught from time to time 

 in foreign seas, and there is a record of one monster seen in 

 British waters. It was given in the 'Zoologist' for June 1875. 

 A dark mass was observed in the sea by the crew of a curragh 



