FROM LAND AND PIER 203 



crab, particularly in its soft state, pounded up with raw potato 

 into one big mash. Sink this in a piece of netting, by means 

 of stones, near the bottom, and fish close to it, giving the 

 netting a good jerk occasionally to shake out some of the 

 contents. If there are any fish about, they will most certainly 

 begin feeding round that net, and if your hook is baited with 

 soft crab, it will surely be taken before long. 



Ground bait has two characteristics : not only does it collect 

 fish, but it brings them on the feed. Let us try to imagine 

 ourselves a fish. We have been feeding, say, on shrimps and 

 small marine insects, and, having about cleared the table, have 

 ceased our repast. Suddenly there appears in front of us a 

 mangled lugworm, screwed up on a hook, and suspended in 

 the water in a very unnatural position. We eye the thing with 

 suspicion. W'hat reason has a lugworm to be hovering over 

 the rocks which pave the bottom of the sea, like some hum- 

 ming bird over a flower in a tropical garden ? But presently 

 there comes through the water a shower of lugworms, and 

 our suspicions vanish at once. ' This queer-looking worm is, 

 after all, only one of a quantity,' we think ; and, swimming 

 hastily about hither and thither, pouching the luscious morsels, 

 we suddenly find that we have inadvertently swallowed the 

 hovering lug, if I may so term it, are hauled up bewailing our 

 stupidity, and lifted over the gunwale of a boat or on to the 

 stage of some pier or other. 



In the same way we regard solitary lumps of soft crab in a 

 hovering state as somewhat suspicious objects, especially at 

 a place where we know hundreds of our brothers have been 

 slain, thanks to their greediness. But when a number of 

 fragments of this most delicious dish than which there is no 

 better in our dietary when fragments, we say, of this most 

 delicate food come floating away with the tide from a stupendous 

 mass of it which now and again shakes itself, giving off sweet 



