30 SEA-FISH. 
they are feeding, he finds no bait to come up to 
the lugworm. Mr. Wilcocks also says that one 
morning, an old bandsman took five on the 
north pier at St. Peter’s Port, Guernsey. A gen- 
tleman signing himself “ Oyster,” recently wrote in 
the Fishing Gazetie, in reply to a statement of my 
own concerning the rarity of the hooking of red 
mullet, that he had caught a number, one of them 
weighing a couple of pounds, on the French coast 
with leger-tackle ; and Mr. Leonard Hare, who also 
noticed my statement, writes to me that he once 
took one when wiffing off the Cornish coast. One 
of the earliest records, says Mr. Wilcocks in his 
letter, of the capture of red mullet on the hook is 
to be found in Salter’s Guide (1830) on p. 170. 
This is of all sea-baits perhaps the most reliable, 
especially in strange waters. It is too 
familiar a mollusc to need description, 
though mention must be made of the fibrous 
“beard,” which it secretes, and with which it 
can on occasion pull itself from point to 
point, eventually making it fast to some post in 
company with others. The pearl-bearing mussels 
once common in the Conway and other rivers, have 
no “beard,” and may therefore lead a roaming 
existence. The worst thing about the mussel is 
the enormous damage it does among the oyster: 
beds. It is more difficult to open properly than 
any other bivalve, and a note will be found on the 
subject in a subsequent chapter. The white, yellow 
and red mussels are races only of a common species, 
the colour probably varying with the food in a 
manner that has not up to the present been satis- 
factorily explained. A red and a white mussel are 
Mussel 
