238 MALACOPTERYGII. 



taken here, of various sizes, the largest with the milt (almost of a milky 

 whiteness) flowing on the slightest pressure of the body ; and the ova just 

 ready for exclusion, they were the size of clover seed. The people said they 

 were all of the large kind here, but I, thoughtlessly, did not look to the 

 point, or bring away any of the fish. Seven inches, however, was about 

 the greatest length of any. 



The males and females were at once distinguished by the distended 

 abdomen of the latter. Xone were taken here " with a hook," but this 

 instrument Avas in requisition in the hands of two men elsewhere, who 

 waded nearly knee-deep into the sea ; and there stirred up the sand with 

 it. The fishers say the sand eels change their ground, so as to be hardly 

 ever two days at the same place ; they never feel sure of finding them 

 anywhere. I saw the fishing going on yesterday by the same party, about 

 a mile distant from where they were to-day — to the North of the entrance 

 to the inner bay. 



The number taken is extremely variable ; the greatest my informant 

 has known by one person during an ebb, from forty to fifty quarts. Dur- 

 ing frosts, it is said, by far the greatest quantity is taken ; they are 

 chiefly eaten by the fishers and their families, but are also carried for sale 

 to the neighbouring small towns, including Downpatrick and Ballyna- 

 hinch, but not farther. They are sold by the quart measure. 



Aug. 23?y7. I saw several young sand eels from two to three inches 

 long, in sandy parts near Annalong ; I endeavoured to catch them in my 

 net, but in vain, they so quickly disappeared in the sand at the bottom of 

 the pool. 



Sept. 20tJi. I questioned Mr. Bi'own of Dundrum and a head-fisherman 

 to-day, respecting sand eels here ; the purport of which is, that at spawn- 

 ing time in winter (when, however, the fish are so thin as not to be 

 sought after generally for food) one man has, diu'ing an ebb, taken three 

 bushels of them ; in summer, too, one person has sometimes taken so many 

 at a time as to require a donkey to di-aw them home. They come far up the 

 bay to spawn : they are becoming gradually scarce, being more regularly 

 followed and used as bait than formerly, yet they tell me that down to 

 the last twenty years a thousand people, including many from five or six 

 miles' distance, would come once annually for thi-ee or four days and 

 bivouack on the sand-hills, living on sand eels and the potatoes that they 

 would take from the neai'est fields. On such occasions party-fights en- 

 livened the proceedings, in which Dundi'um sufi"ered by attacks on the 

 windows, &c., of each party. They were very lawless and uncivilized 

 gatherings. 



At spring tides the sand eels are sought for during the year, excepting 

 the Avinter months, when poor from spawning ; a thousand persons are still 

 occasionally engaged fishing at the two sides of the inner bay (Dundrum 

 and Ballykinlar), and on a good day will average from eighteen to twenty 

 quarts * (about a hundred fish to the quart) ; a good fisher will take sixty 

 quarts. This season there was but one very successful day, when seventy 

 quarts were taken by the best fishers. The usual price at which they are 

 sold is If/, per quart. Lightning has a great effect upon them in causing 

 them to bury themselves in the sands. 



Amtn. Tohianus, distinguished as Snedden from the sand eel by the 



* My other informant (but not so good an authority) agreed respecting the 

 number of persons, but thought they would not take one-half of what is above 

 stated. 



