FISHERY PROBLEMS 175 



assemble in shoals to pursue the " banks " of young cod. 

 They completely surround them, isolate them, and drive 

 them to the surface, or to the shore, where they fall upon 

 them. Hake pursue the " banks " of sardine. Whiting 

 pursue the shoals of herring. The fry of the sole pursue 

 a complicated strategy before catching their prey. 1 If 

 the species seem to have preference for this or the other 

 form of diet, they change it readily if it fails. When 

 there are no hares, one eats rabbit. Do not the fish in 

 the fishponds eat insects, plants, and prepared foods such 



1 The fishing-frogs devour enormous quantities of fish. It is not 

 uncommon to find in the stomach of one angler-fish as many as a 

 score of flounders or fifty or sixty herring. Here are the names of 

 a few fish, the names in brackets being those of the fish on which 

 they most habitually feed : Angler-fish, fishing-frog (chiefly soles, 

 flounders, and herring) ; plaice (molluscs, in particular the solen, 

 annelidae, and small fish) ; coalfish (young codfish, launces) ; conger 

 (the females, which are stronger and more numerous than the males, 

 devour the latter, also soles) ; black conger (crustaceans) ; gilt-head 

 (mullet, periwinkles) ; haddocks (young cod, launces) ; white 

 tunny (mullet, anchovies, sardines, flying-fish) ; gurnards (raising 

 the stones with their " fingers," molluscs and small crustaceans) ; 

 herring (young launces, molluscs, annelidae, and especially very 

 minute crustacean of the genus Temora, 60,000 of which have been 

 found in a single stomach, and algae of the phosphorescent species) ; 

 wrass (molluscs and crustaceans) ; pollack (small cod) ; dabs (small 

 fish); mackerel (all fish and fry); whiting (herring and their 

 eggs) ; hake (sardines, mackerel) ; cod (larvae, fish of all sorts, 

 molluscs, crustaceans) ; grey mullet (masticate the sand and strain 

 the alimentary constituents with their pharyngeal sieve); bream 

 (vegetables, molluscs, shrimps) ; young whiting -pout (small 

 crustaceans) ; adults (larvae of fish) ; John Dory (sprats, false 

 smelt, molluscs) ; rays (all fish, crabs) ; sardines (copepoda, 

 molluscs, diatoms as many as 30,000,000 in one stomach) ; adult 

 sole (worms, no longer hunts its prey) ; sole fry (just out of the egg, 

 infusoria ; later, the fry of pelagic sprats ; later, young pout ; 

 flounders, plaice ; before transformation into the adult form young 

 soles devour one another, even when of equal size) ; older fry (the 

 larvae of rockling). 



