STUPIDITY OF FISHERMEN. 273 



tutored them that they know what you want, they are 

 strangely backward in their .supplies. Money is of course 

 the only cogent argument ; yet even money moves them 

 but slowly. They go out day after day, staying out all 

 night, and return often without a shilling's worth of fish ; yet 

 although you offer to pay them for oyster-shells and weeds as 

 for fish, they cannot easily be induced to throw this " refuse" 

 of their nets into a bucket, instead of throwing it overboard 

 again. They promise to do so, but you generally wait in vain. 

 At Tenby, in spite of urgent entreaties and liberal promises, 

 only one Loligo was brought me ; at ScUly, nothing ; at Gorey, 

 in spite of my being on the best terms with fishermen whom 

 I had employed, and with whom I had gone trawling, five 

 weeks passed before a bucket of refuse was brought me.* 

 Two words — pertinacity and liberality — sum up the whole 

 art of gaining this desirable result ; when gained, you 

 will need no argument to prove the superiority of a fishing- 

 village. 



Comfortably settled at Gorey, and my working-room set 

 in order, I had only to await the spring-tide, once more to 

 gather a variety of pets around me. Not that I was even 

 then without serious occupation. Before leaving Scilly I had 

 put up my Nudibranchs in spiiits of wine, and these were 

 now carefully to be dissected. Make no wry face at the 

 word " dissection " — it indicates a very different process from 

 the one you conceive ; and as it is one indispensable to the 

 naturalist, I may as well dissipate the prejudice which hangs 



* SwAMMERDAMM {Bibel der JVatur, p. 34) makes the same complaint of the 

 Dutch fishermen, and justly attributes to it the long continuance of our im- 

 perfect knowledge of murine marvels. 



