26 SEA-FISH. 
of immense length, but nowadays regarded rather 
in the light of short journeys to and from the 
shallow to the deep water. The attractiveness of 
herring as a bait lies in two qualities,—the silver 
sheen of the skin, and the oily nature of the flesh. 
Launce, see Sand-eel. 
Less used than the mussel, the limpet is at times 
a good bait for the smaller fish, though by 
no means easy to remove from the rocks, to 
which it clings with a glutinous secretion evidently 
insoluble in water. To remove a limpet from 
the little pit in which it rests, a performance 
rendered still more difficult by the shape of the 
smooth shell, requires a force equivalent to about 
60 Ibs.! Though to all appearance a fixture, 
the limpet is able to move very slowly over the 
submerged rock. It is an extraordinary creature in 
many ways, for its “foot” is its stomach, and on 
its tongue are a couple of thousand teeth. Its 
mode of feeding on the weed over which it moves 
has been happily compared with browsing. 
Limpet 
[The Zzzg is another of our fish that lie in the 
ordinary course without the scope of the amateur, 
though I recollect one case of a large but ill-con- 
ditioned example being caught off the Dover 
Admiralty Pier. It is “bearded” like most of the 
cod family, to which it belongs, its nearest ally 
being the burbot of some of our rivers.] 
If asked to name the best all-round sca-bait, I 
Lug- Should be sorely puzzled to choose between 
worm the mussel and the lugworm, though I 
think the mussel would take first place. Yet 
there are few fish that refuse lugworm, which 
