SOME FISH NOTES 293 



dog-fishes, and the drawing-in tendencies of the undercurrent 

 attendant on a westerly wind ; an easterly wind, flinging up 

 big breakers always " pulls out " jetsam, but drives floating 

 objects ashore. 



Occasionally fishes are thrown ashore in quite an unex- 

 pected manner, and certain fishes seem more liable to this 

 kind of accident than others. The opah is one of these. A 

 deep-bodied, heavy fish, with a comparative insufficiency of 

 fin power, it has been notorious by its proneness, when 

 muddled amongst sandbanks and adverse currents, to end its 

 career on the seashore. One of the first I ever saw was 

 stranded at Caister in October, 1891, after a storm. It 

 weighed fifty-one pounds, was preserved for a local fish mer- 

 chant, and has recently been placed in the Tolhouse Museum. 

 Unfortunately, it seems impossible to reproduce the magni- 

 ficent colouration of the living or freshly-dead fish, but the 

 preserver has at least made it passably realistic. This is the 

 fourth specimen, to my knowledge, obtained in the locality, 

 and all of them landed against their will. 



The same remarks apply to the Ray's bream (Sparus niger), 

 a deep bream-like fish which, when unwittingly wandering 

 amongst the numerous sandbanks, shares the same untimely 

 fate. Centrolophus pompilus (the black fish), of which only 

 one specimen is recorded for Norfolk, introduced himself in 

 like manner. I have occasionally seen very immature bass 

 left on the sands by the retreating tide, and could only 

 account for their presence by their having strayed too closely 

 inshore and been drawn in by the undercurrent. 



Congers, though not nearly so frequently of late years, 

 were at one time often found on the beach during continuous 

 easterly gales, when a severe frost had obtained ; their 

 bladders becoming distended by the severity of the cold, 

 they found themselves incapable of sinking, and so were 

 thrown from billow to billow until landed on the sands. It 

 was a custom in sharp weather for certain perambulators of 

 the beach old men generally to take a sack with them in 

 which to drop their finds, and more especially with a hope of 

 falling in with conger eels. 



A fair-sized whiting surprised a friend on one occasion by 

 flinging itself on to the beach in front of him, as did quite 

 recently a large squid (Loltgo vulgaris). In both instances I 



