SOME FISH-NOTES FROM GREAT YARMOUTH. 3 



that it weighed but a third of the proportionate normal weight, 

 and looked something like a very bad imitation of an Eel. 

 Abscesses on the gills suggested tuberculosis. 



A second wretched specimen was sent me from Lowestoft by 

 the Piermaster, on February 11th. For a length of 17 in., it 

 only weighed 14 oz., and resembled nothing so much as a three- 

 cornered file. The gaunt head, bare of all muscle, and merely 

 covered by skin, looked like a skull bone, the huge eyes being 

 unduly staring. There were a few fish-lice (Caligus) and a 

 bloated Lerncea attached to one of the gills. There were no 

 internal parasites, but all the organs were wasted and bloodless, 

 and the liver was much diseased. I looked for the Hagfish, but 

 found none. Between forty and fifty years ago, so numerously 

 were Haddocks sometimes netted on the East Coast that, when 

 the markets were glutted, many were taken back and thrown 

 into the sea, in order to keep up the prices. But to-day, as a 

 local fish merchant recently emphatically remarked, " should a 

 Haddock show himself in East Anglian waters, he would be 

 chased to death all over the place." One might imagine that 

 such had been the fate of these diseased examples. 



As recently as December 1st the present scarcity of Haddocks 

 for the month was referred to in a certain journal as follows : — 

 " The Haddock, which ten. years ago was, next to the Herring, 

 the most abundant of our food fishes, is becoming so scarce that 

 at Aberdeen alone the shortage for the current year, up to the 

 current week, as compared with the corresponding period of 

 1912, is 5200 tons." If the devil (of reckless greed) ever had a 

 hand in anything, it was in the invention and improvident use of 

 the trawl-net ; and unless the use of this engine is forbidden on 

 the spawning grounds of Clupea harengus, there will be a 

 Herring famine in years to come. 



Quantities of Sprats were being taken off the Suffolk Coast 

 in early January. " Set" Sprats (fixed nets) and "trawled" ones 

 are always scaleless and lustreless, and not nearly so sightly nor 

 so edible as the " drove " Sprats — fish gilled in drift-nets. 



In February a well-known angling expert in Norwich, having 

 captured a goodly bag of Pike, offered several of them to his 

 friends for eating, but was invariably met by the remark that 

 they did not care for freshwater fish. This antipathy to the 



