MARINE FOOD FISHES 133 
At Billingsgate, seven hundred tons of fish are some- 
times delivered in a day, but Billingsgate is a small 
market compared with Grimsby and others. 
The smallest trawl used round our coast is the shrimp 
trawl, with a spread of about twenty feet. If the reader 
has never seen a shrimp trawl hauled, he should take the 
first opportunity of doing so. Shrimps may or may 
not be present in large numbers, but thousands of 
other forms of marine life are sure to be caught, 
including tiny soles, plaice, dabs, codling, whiting, 
sand-eels, pipe fish, gobies, silvery sticklebacks, crabs, 
star-fish, sea-urchins, and hosts of other interesting 
objects representing both the animal and vegetable 
kingdom. 
Before leaving the subject of nets, I should like to 
refer to the difference between the beam and the otter 
trawl. In the former the mouth of the net is kept open 
by means of a beam, which may be as much as fifty 
feet in length. This beam is raised two or three feet 
from the bottom by means of stirrup-shaped iron con- 
trivances at each end, the beam being attached to the 
top of the stirrup, while the flat part or shoe of the 
stirrup glides along the ground. Fastened to the 
bottom of the stirrup is a length of stout rope half as 
long again as the length of the beam. As the trawl is 
dragged along, this rope, known as the “ ground line,” 
naturally forms a semicircle. Along the beam is another 
rope, the “head line,” which is the same length as the 
beam. To these two ropes is attached the netting of 
