CHAPTER XVII. 



SHORE FISHES. 



WE have no intention of attempting to give in this little 

 book an account of British marine fishes. That is a task that 

 needs several volumes for its accomplishment. But without 

 going from the shore we may make acquaintance with a con- 

 siderable number of fishes. Where trawlers come in we may, 

 of course, see fish of all sorts, but as in most cases the 

 trawlers put in with their catch to the nearest market-port, 

 we shall take no account of this method of increasing our 

 knowledge. From time to time the local fishermen get strange 

 things in their trammels, such as enormous angler-fishes ; one 

 day one of our fishermen got a porpoise in this way, and 

 brought it ashore for my special benefit. But these things 

 also I shall treat as outside our bounds, which includes only 

 the fish we can find in the rock-pools, or under stones at 

 low-water, or can catch from the fringing rocks as they 

 haunt the weedy jungles of such places. 



To begin, let us take some fair-sized rock-pool, between tide- 

 . marks; one with irregular walls overgrown with green and 

 purple weeds, and pinkish coralline with miniature caverns 

 and clefts in the walls, and a heavy stone or two at the 

 bottom. In such a pool and we know hundreds such we 

 shall not fail for several examples of fish, though we are not 

 likely to find all the species here named in one and the same 

 pool. Three or four species of fish at the most is what we 

 may expect from one pool ; but in several basins within a few 

 yards of each other we may get a greater variety. 



