A FORLORN QUEST, ETC. 259 



The other fish, with the capture of which, by 

 much less sporting but not less amusing methods, 

 we passed some of the pleasant hours, was the 

 muraena, a first cousin of the conger eel, but 

 fiercer in manner and appearance. The conger, 

 whose bite is said to have left its mark on the hind 

 leg of the gentle Diplodocus, is bad enough in all 

 conscience, but compared with the muraena it is 

 as a silkworm to a rattlesnake. It is singular that 

 the waters contiguous to Madeira should have 

 produced two such aesthetic extremes as the 

 muraena and opah, though there is just one fish 

 worse even than the eel, and that is the Spada, 

 one of the scabbard-fishes. As this nightmare 

 of the deep sea is delicious eating, Nature no doubt 

 has bestowed its ugliness as a protection. She 

 adopts a similar plan with some of those vestals 

 who, vowed to literature, devote their lives to a 

 great work of extraction in the dim shades of our 

 public libraries. Otherwise, outward beauty and 

 delicate flavour are often found united. The 

 strawberry, the peach, the red mullet and the 

 golden plover look the royal dishes they are. The 

 spada, on the other hand, unquestionably the best 

 table-fish in Funchal, looks as if its father had 

 been the sea-serpent and its mother a griffin. It 

 baffles description in the colourless phrase of 

 modern scientific writing and demands rather 

 the poetic flights of the older observers, whose 



