28 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



quantities were still being sent to Yarmouth, the long-continued 

 westerly and south-westerly winds being favourable to fishing. 

 The Sprats that I have sampled have been this year of ex- 

 quisite flavour, an opinion not shared by Mr. Eobert Beazor 

 (vide " Notes "). 



Mr. Robert Beazor, Senr., fish -merchant, as usual, sends me 

 some interesting " Notes." He writes : — " On Jan. 1st (New 

 Year's Bay) a half-dozen fine Smelts, full of roe, were sent to the 

 market with some flat fish captured in a draw-net [seine], and 

 for several days following others were landed. It was earlier 

 than I ever knew them to be taken. Plenty of Butch Smelts 

 were daily on the market, prices being exceptionally low — from 

 Gd. to 9d. per score, in boxes of two score fishes. On the whole 

 the Smelt season was a poor one ; the thirty or forty boats 

 engaged did not average more than four or five score fishes each 

 per tide. The largest quantity I had in one day was about fifty 

 score. The Trout season was practically a failure ; the smelters 

 proper took but very few. In May, on three or four days, a 

 nice lot, however, came in from Winterton and other seaside 

 villages adjoining. On June l'Jth I recorded the landing of a 

 12-lb. Salmon by one of the drifters that had gone out for 

 Mackerel. It had fouled and rolled itself up in the net, and was 

 captured eighteen miles east of Yarmouth. This has been an 

 exceptional year for Mackerel, which were landed in large 

 quantities. Early in June Horse-Mackerel [Scads] were taken 

 in large quantities with the Mackerel, but there was no sale for 

 this fish, not even with the barrow-hawkers, who find no diffi- 

 culty in disposing of the less tempting Bogfish ! I noticed 

 several Scribbled Mackerel and one black-backed Mackerel 

 during the season. In September a man brought to my office 

 a fine specimen of the Anchovy that had been enmeshed with 

 the Herrings some three miles east of Corton Light-vessel. It 

 was as large as a middle-sized Herring. The great Herring 

 fishery needs no comment from me, but I must remark on the 

 miserably poor quality of the fish, accounting for so many 

 merchants being without their customary quantity of ' Reds ' 

 ['high-dried' ], of which there are even now but few to be 

 obtained. The Sprat season has not, to my mind, been one of 

 the best; the fish are very 'cliny,' and poor and mean, like the 



