54 THE SALT OF MY LIFE 



best to eat ; and, if it were, I fancy that dogfish 

 have far more admirers than, for instance, pollack. 

 It is not possible for the most skilful fisherman 

 to prevent a dogfish seizing his bait, and when it 

 does so it requires just as much patience and 

 adroitness to play and kill it as any other fish of 

 the same size. The unfairness of such a regula- 

 tion is that a competitor's boat may, through no 

 fault of either his or his boatman's, be anchored 

 over a shoal of dogfish, and he may waste half his 

 day playing and unhooking the vermin without 

 getting any nearer his goal. As I have already 

 owned to taking no personal interest in these 

 functions, such dispassionate criticism may be 

 regarded as gratuitous, but the condition seems 

 to me likely to operate unequally, and on that 

 ground alone I have ventured to take exception to 

 it. That crabs and mussels should be excluded 

 seems equitable, since it would be possible by 

 leaving a large bait lying on the rocks to catch 

 quantities of the former, and a bare hook, with no 

 bait at all, would, skilfully manipulated, dredge 

 pounds of the latter. But to shut out the dogfish 

 which takes a bait in the same way as other 

 kinds that count, seems to me an arbitrary rule 

 calling for at any rate explanation. 



At Dover I fished a good deal in the spring and 

 summer of 1892 while staying with an old and 

 valued friend, Surgeon-General Paske, a survivor 



