FISH- NOTES FROM GREAT YARMOUTH. 19 



examples came to port, probably from the neighbourhood of 

 Cromer Knowle. On Aug. 14th I saw one on Mr. Beazor's fish- 

 slab, weighing four stone. 



At Aldeburgh two Bass scaling 13 lb., and a Grey Mullet of 

 6 lb., were taken, and recorded in the 'Angler's News' of 

 July 20th. 



In the following week's issue a very fine Sting Eay (Raia 

 pastinaca) was chronicled ; it had been taken in a trawl-net off 

 the Sizewell Bank, near Southwold, on the 20th. The fish 

 scaled 60 lb., and had a double barb to the tail. It had made 

 itself extremely disagreeable to the Soles that had been unfortu- 

 nate enough to be netted with it. 



I commenced my August holidays by a foray among the local 

 ditches in search of Sticklebacks, with a view to determining the 

 several varieties I had hoped to find in the neighbourhood. My 

 captures were mostly very small — half-grown fishes, an adult 

 being very exceptional. It seemed to me just possible, seeing 

 the enormous number one meets with in spring, that after 

 the duties of procreation have ended, there must be some 

 obscure forces at work to eliminate many of these elders. 

 Do they die and become the food for the many carnivorous 

 larvae and crustaceans, &c, that frequent the same ditches? 

 One seldom finds dead fish at or near the surface, although in 

 July, 1909, I discovered dead Sticklebacks partly eaten by 

 crustaceans. They were the variety known as Gasterosteus 

 trachurus (the Bough-tailed). With the exception of Ten-spined 

 Sticklebacks, on this occasion I only met with the Quarter 

 Armed (G. gymnnrus), both on the marshes north of Yarmouth 

 and to the southward. 



In the shallow and rather fetid ditches bordering on the 

 Biver Bure I met with numerous half-grown Sticklebacks woe- 

 fully smothered with black spots and blotches immediately under 

 the skin. I take it to be the Trichodina pedicidus, referred to by 

 Dr. Day in his article on the G aster osteidce (' British Fishes,' 

 vol. i. p. 243), an evidently parasitic Infusoria. I notice that 

 the shallower and warmer — and consequently dirtier — the waters 

 haunted by Sticklebacks, the more susceptible do they seem to' 

 attacks from parasitic visitors, and from tumours. In the same 

 net in which I garnered the Sticklebacks I secured some peculiar 



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