270 FIELD-NOTES FOR THE YEAR. CH. XIX. 



sea gets either entangled in the nets or is cast upon 

 the shore during his pursuit of the shoals of smaller 

 fish. Among others I have more than once seen a 

 most hideous large-headed brute of a fish, whom 

 the country people call sometimes "the sea-devil," 

 sometimes " the sea-angel," but whose more regu- 

 lar cognomen is, I believe, "the sea-angler." The 

 first name he owes to his excessive and wicked- 

 looking ugliness; the second must have been given 

 him ironically; whilst the third is derived from his 

 reputed habit of attracting fish to their destruction 

 by a very wily ruse. He buries himself, it is said, 

 in the sands by scraping a hole with his two most 

 unseemly and deformed -looking "hands," which 

 are placed below what may be called his chin. 

 Being in this way quite concealed, he allows some 

 long, worm-like appendages, which grow from the 

 top of his head, to wave and float above the surface 

 of the sand : fish taking these for some kind of 

 food are attracted to the spot, when the concealed 

 monster by a sudden spring manages to ingulf 

 his victims in the fearfully-wide cavity of his 

 mouth, which is armed with hundreds of teeth 

 sloping inwards, and as hard and sharp as needles, 

 so that nothing which has once entered it can 

 escape. So runs the tale, the exact truth of 

 which I am not prepared to vouch for. 



