7518 Mollusks. 



of straggling rocks, which extend off it at some distance. Between the reef and the 

 rocky cape there is a level stony flat, which is nearly dry at low water. The tide is 

 out, so, armed with my walking-stick, I pass along the exposed level rocks round the 

 very end of the Cape, and a wild scene it assuredly is. As the tide comes in, the 

 roaring of the surge, as the breakers from the reef come rolling in, is extremely 

 solemn. The feeling of loneliness is so complete as almost to make the flesh creep as 

 you pass one corner after another, and find dark caves in the rocks where Bruin may 

 be lying perdu. Far out upon a sandy spit the black-tailed gulls {Larus melanurus, 

 Temm.) are assembled, and along the rocky level the rooks are busy feeding on the 

 rotting Cryptochitons, which the surf has thrown up dead upon the strand. The 

 white bones of a whale, half-buried in the sand, show where some leviathan has been 

 wrecked in trying to double the Cape. On the opposite side I find a sandy bay, with 

 great heaps of Zostera, Fucus, Laminaria, and other sea-weed, thrown up recently 

 upon the beach. Here I find Amathina tricarinata, and among the weed and along 

 the high-water line, where fragile things are often deposited by the ebb tide, I gather 

 a good store of Velutinidae, pink, calcareous, black, membranaceous, brown or covered 

 with a velvety epidermis. — Arthur Adams. 



Squid-Jishing in Japan. — On the 19th of November, 1859, we arrive late in the 

 evening off Nisi-Bama, in the Oki Islands, — a very charming little group not far 

 from the shores of Niphon. As we near the anchorage the lights on the water are so 

 numerous and brilliant, and all moving about in such an exceedingly ignis fatum 

 kind of a manner that a boat is sent away with the interpreter to ascertain the cause 

 of such an unusual spectacle. On his returu " Oudah " reports that the maritime 

 " will-o'-the-wisps" belong to fishing-boats, hundreds of which, he says, are out 

 looking for " Ika-Surame," which phrase, after much circumlocution and many 

 elaborate explanations, turns out at length to mean simply " Squids." The lights 

 are produced by kindling birch-bark in small kinds of gratings with long wooden 

 handles, machines known among seafaring men by the name of " devils." The 

 flame of the fires is very clear and vivid, and the " devils " being held over the sides of 

 the boats attract the squids. These latter, I find, are a species of Ommaslrephes, a 

 sort of sea-cuttle, which is nocturnal in its habits, and which swims very rapidly near 

 the surface in immense shoals. The squids are taken by what is known among 

 fishermen as "jigging." The "jig" is made of iron, and consists of a long shank 

 surmounted by a circlet of small recurved hooks. These cuttles are favourite articles 

 of diet both with the Japanese and Chinese, and are very carefully dried for the 

 market and sold in vast quantities. They are also extensively used as bait in fishing 

 for bonito and other large Scomberidse, which abound along the coasts ; the squid is 

 strung through its entire length, the club of one of the long tentacular arms artfully 

 covering and concealing the hook. Near Hakodadi there is a small fishing village 

 exclusively devoted to the capture and curing of these nutritious Cephalopods. 

 Many hundreds of thousands may here be daily seen drying in the op^ air, all very 

 nicely cleaned, each kept flat by means of little bamboo stretchers, and suspended in 

 regular rows on lines which are raised on poles about six feet from the ground. The 

 open spaces are filled with these squid-laden lines, and before all the houses in the 

 village squids everywhere form a novel kind of screen. The Japanese name of the 

 place is " Shal-Sawabi," but by us it was always called " Squid Village." — Id. 



