160 THE LOG OF THE SUN 



will hold back with frantic flaps of its groat 

 "wings," and tax all the strength of the sturdy 

 Acadian fishermen to pull it to the gunwale. 



Now and then a huge "meat-rock," the fisher- 

 men's apt name for an anemone, comes up, im- 

 paled on a hook, and still clinging to a stone of five 

 to ten pounds weight. These gigantic scarlet ones 

 from full fifty fathoms far surpass any near shore. 

 Occasionally the head alone of a large fish will 

 appear, with the entire body bitten clean off, a 

 hint of the monsters which must haunt the lower 

 depths. The pressure of the air must be exces- 

 sive, for many of the fishes have their swimming 

 bladders fairly forced out of their mouths by the 

 lessening of atmospheric pressure as they are 

 drawn to the surface. When a basket starfish 

 finds one of the baits in that sunless void far be- 

 neath our boat, he hugs it so tenaciously that the 

 upward jerks of the reel only make him hold the 

 more tightly. 



Once in a great while the fishermen find what 

 they call a "knob-fish" on one of their hooks, and 

 I never knew what they meant until one day a 

 small colony of five was brought ashore. Boltenia, 

 the scientists call them, tall, queer-shaped things ; 

 a stalk six to eight inches in length, with a knob 

 or oblong bulb-like body at the summit, looking 

 exactly like the flower of a lady-slipper orchid and 

 as delicately coloured. This is a member of that 

 curious family of Ascidians, which forever 



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