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the Ascension, they came up to lay their eggs; on their 
return men employed for the purpose captured them, and 
deposited them in the turtle ponds for use when required. 
They were served out as fresh-meat rations twice a week : 
the small ones when hatched found their way to the sea. 
The pond is only a depét for keeping them ; they did not 
breed there at all. There is a peculiar turtle found in the 
mouth of the Congo with a head somewhat resembling a 
bat’s. I have not seen the kind anywhere else. Barra- 
couta, porpoises, bonito, dolphin, sucker-fish, pilot or zebra 
fish, cat-fish, and pouter-fish are to be found on the Gold 
Coast: off the Congo, whales, thresher, sword-fish, and 
saw-fish. A saw-fish cut my boat’s cable, a 34-inch hawser, 
in two; a friend of mine had-a similar misfortune off 
Cabenda. 
Mr. JEX had been pleased to hear the remarks of Captain 
Curtis, showing that there were bottom fish on the coast of 
Africa, the Paper being mostly devoted to surface swimming 
or round fish, 
Mr. BANDFORD GRIFFITH said he had been up and down 
the coast three or four times, and although twenty years 
ago there must have been no fishing, there were now fishing 
boats to be seen at all places. At Sierra Leone they came 
and offered fish for sale; and lower down, on the Liberia 
coast and at Axim, he had seen numbers of fish on shore, 
but they were all sharks, varying in length from one to 
twenty-four feet. A little above Axim there were great 
numbers of sword-fish, and off the Dahomean coast he 
had seen sword-fish twelve or fourteen feet long. At 
Accra he had seen fishing: boats going out morning after 
morning and coming back in the evening; and at Lagos 
there were regular fishing villages, though there the fisher- 
men did not go out beyond the surf. No doubt one reason 
