258 LINES IN PLEASANT PLACES 



into a bay with poles, and pretty furious they were, 

 lashing round with their tails and snapping viciously. 

 As these fellows were 10 ft. long, the men told off to 

 the duty had to proceed warily, and after an hour's 

 exciting sport succeeded in lassoing them one after the 

 other round the neck, yanking them ashore, and bustling 

 them into wooden cases made expressly for their accom- 

 modation. They were at once taken to the warm 

 interior of the horticultural building, and I saw them 

 spending their Sabbath in some degree of comfort in 

 the tepid water of the basin, without even guessing 

 that in the old country it was Shakespeare's day. 



Some of the queer fish swimming about in the big 

 aquarium tanks naturally drew my attention. Carriers 

 from Florida and elsewhere were arriving every day 

 with new specimens, and I could see, in a quarter of an 

 hour's stroll round the circular annexe, more live fish 

 than I had ever seen in three of the largest aquariums 

 known in England, had they been combined into one. 

 There were some large fellows, something like pollack, 

 cruising around, and these are called buffaloes. Insinu- 

 ating their slow course through the crowd were fresh- 

 water gar-fish with long spike noses. The catfish, with 

 its greasy chubby body, portmanteau mouth, and 

 prominent wattles, were precisely like those we used to 

 catch (and eat sometimes) in Australia. Carp were 

 present in numbers, including the mirror and leather 

 varieties, but carp culture was not so fashionable as it 

 was in the States. My eyes were gladdened with a 

 grand lot of tench, in the primest colouring of bright 

 bronze ; they were raised from some of our British 

 stock. A whole tank was filled with two-year-old 

 fontinalis ; another with young lake trout, handsome 

 12-in. examples at two years old, and not easy at a 

 glance to distinguish from fontinalis. Then came a 



