160 THE LOG OF THE SUN 



iwill hold back with frantic flaps of its great 

 "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 poimds 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, ai 

 hint of the monsters which must haunt the lowei; 

 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 ia 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. Bolteniaf 

 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 



