10 FALLACIES AS TO MAKING OCEAN BARREN. 



In this connection the notion which places on the trawl the 

 onus of removing the food of the fishes by rendering the bottom 

 ''barren" may briefly be alluded to. Where, when, and how this 

 barrenness has been found is not stated, but its results are said 

 to be as disastrous to the fishes as the destruction of the grass 

 in an enemy's country would be to the flocks and herds. Such 

 writers appear to be unaware of the vast abundance and 

 variety of pelagic beings — from fishes to plants — which own 

 relationship neither to the bottom nor to the locality, but are 

 swept hither and thither to nourish, with cosmopolitan liber- 

 ality, the fishes of our own and the neighbouring shores. They 

 have overlooked the wealth of life in the sand and mud, which 

 no trawl can seriously disturb. No barren area of this nature 

 in the open sea is known to us, and a consideration of the 

 forces of nature in the sea would show that its barrenness if not 

 wholly hypothetical would be short-lived. A trawl that would 

 simultaneously remove the contents of the water from surface 

 to bottom, sweep the loose forms on the latter as well as those 

 deeply immersed in it — has yet to be invented. 



To return from this digression, we observe in other mem- 

 bers of the sub-kingdom the same remarkable recuperation and 

 persistence. Though along a limited line of beach the larger 

 anemones, a valued bait for cod, may be removed by the 

 fishermen almost entirely from the tidal rocks, yet the same 

 species flourishes in the neighbouring and deeper waters, and 

 sooner or later the blanks are obliterated. The other large 

 forms in deep water are in no danger, and even crushing under 

 foot on the deck of a ship does not always destroy them, for 

 each piece becomes an independent animal. It is stated that 

 in one of the West Indian Islands a proprietor, wishing to 

 extirpate a colony of gorgeous anemones^ which attracted 



1 By the kindness of Mr J. E. Duerden, Curator of the Museum of the 

 Institute of Jamaica, I am able to identify this form with Condylactis passiflora, 

 Duch. and Mich., a gorgeously coloured anemone. Its column, incapable of 

 retraction, is bright scarlet or orange, either diffuse or in granulations, while 

 distally it is brownish red. The long adhesive and somewhat thick tentacles, 

 which wave gracefully, are also incapable of complete retraction, and are dark 

 brown with minute white granulations, while the tips are bright purple or 

 greenish-yellow, or in partial collapse rich iridescent green. 



