THE SEA- CUCUMBER. 25 



Twenty bushels of scallops are sometimes taken at 

 once ; but this is rare. The average produce of the 

 Weymouth trawlers is five bushels per week, which are 

 readily sold at twopence per hundred ; about seven 

 hundred going to the bushel. The customers are 

 " mostly the genteels," who eat the morceaux stewed 

 with flour or scolloped. The worthy woman who com- 

 mands the supply had had the trade in her hands for 

 twenty- eight years (in 1853) ; she had never heard 

 them called by any other name than " Squins," though 

 she understood they were called Scallops in some places. 

 " Squin" is by some said to be a corruption of " Quin," 

 after the actor and epicure of that name, who is reported 

 to have been fond of the delicate mollusk ; but I much 

 doubt the derivation. 1 



As a proof of the tenacity of life possessed by this 

 species, a fisherman assured me that he once put a quan- 

 tity in a bag into a cupboard and forgot them, till, after 

 the lapse of a week, turning them out he found them alive. 



But now another object of interest claims attention : 

 for, in this cavern, closely squeezed in between the layers 

 of stone, I see the satiny- white skin of a glorious Sea- 

 cucumber. And now to get him out, there's the rub. 



1 Quin died in 1766. Montagu, in 1803, says of this Pecten, that " it 

 is known by the name of Frills or Queens," with no allusion to the actor. 

 The term " frill " obviously refers to the form of the shell. 



