GREA T BRIT A IN. 63 



round, being taken during the winter in the English 

 Channel ; and in one winter a Plymouth trawler took so 

 many that they realised 20. Opinions vary as to the 

 food they eat. The ancients considered them very foul 

 feeders, even supposing that they devoured corpses. They 

 live on small Crustacea and molluscs, and in an aquarium 

 appear partial to pieces of mussel. It is interesting to 

 observe how they employ their barbels as feelers along the 

 bottom while in search of food. 



Means of capture. Ground-seines, trammels, beam- 

 trawls, and mullet-nets. It has been remarked at Penzance 

 that on their first appearance they are mostly taken in 

 beam-trawls ; at the succeeding spring-tides they augment 

 in numbers, and are captured in ground-seines, sometimes 

 as many as 50 or 60 in a night. The reason they are 

 occasionally taken in drift-nets has been assumed to be 

 that, when changing their locality, they swim near the 

 surface, even should the water be very deep. Occasionally 

 they take a bait. On being captured, or as soon as landed, 

 if intended for the London market, the scales are generally 

 stripped off by the thumb-nail, which occasions a contrac- 

 tion of the pigment cells, for were this not done, the 

 brilliant red colour observed in those exposed for sale at 

 fishmongers' would be less apparent, and the fish of dimi- 

 nished value for the table. Irrespective of this, were the 

 scales not removed, and the fish to dry while in transit to 

 the market, they (the scales) would become very adherent, 

 and it would be difficult to remove them without tearing 

 the skin. In some localities, as Penzance, were the scales 

 removed the fish would be unsaleable. Those taken in 

 a trammel are of more value than such as are captured 

 with the beam-trawl, because, being less bruised, they keep 

 longer. 



