BEAUTIFUL SHELL-FISH. 237 



"When dried it resembles whalebone, and makes a very nice coach 

 whip. Our bone fish are very similar in flavor and appearance 

 to the northern shad." 



Mr. Sargeant states, that the dolphin, king fish, Spanish 

 mackerel, bonita and rock fish weigh from fifty to one hun- 

 dred pounds, and that the jew fish often weighs six hundred 

 pounds. Among the remaining Bahama fish, he mentions the 

 margate, cat, king, Hamlet, Miss Isix, grunt, runner, yellow tail, 

 snapper, stripped snapper, gray snapper, pork, soldier, jack, 

 goggle-eyed, cockeye, pilot, mullet, plate, grouper, shad, goat, 

 trumpeter, sunset, porgy, sailor's choice, sand j^orjioise, balahoo, 

 and crawfish or lobster. 



The shell-fish found in the Bahama waters harmonize perfect- 

 ly with the element in which they live, and with all the varied 

 forms of vegetable and animal life with which they are surrounded. 

 Exquisitely beautiful are they all. There is no shock to the most 

 delicate and refined taste in passing from corals and corallines to 

 the fish that live and sport in the stony submarine bowers and 

 grottoes, — and from gorgonias and algae to mollusks — all are 

 wonderfully beautiful in form and color, and live in water that 

 pleases by its warmth, and charms by the sparkling brilliancy of 

 its hues. These combined, constitute exquisitely pictured leaves 

 of a most captivating chapter in the book of nature which God 

 himself has illustrated. The perfection of the work will not 

 surprise us if we reflect that the Artist is divine. It has been 

 estimated that there are not less than four thousand different 

 species of shell-fish in the waters of the Bahamas, and Mr. Phelps 

 claims to have collected of the shells nearly one thousand. The 

 shores abound with them, and they seem in many places almost 

 as numerous as pebbles. We were astonished to find how large 

 a number of handsome specimens we Avere able to collect within 

 a small circle almost anywhere upon the shore Avithout changing 



