238 
MALACOPTERYGII. 
taken here, of various sizes, the largest with the milt (almost of a milky 
whiteness) flowing on the slightest pressure of the body ; and the ova just 
ready for exclusion, they were the size of clover seed. The people said they 
were all of the large kind here, but I, thoughtlessly, did not look to the 
point, or bring away any of the fish. Seven inches, however, was about 
the greatest length of any. 
The males and females were at once distinguished by the distended 
abdomen of the latter. None were taken here “with a hook,” but this 
instrument was in requisition in the hands of two men elsewhere, who 
waded nearly knee-deep into the sea ; and there stirred up the sand with 
it. The fishers say the sand eels change their ground, so as to be hardly 
ever two days at the same place ; they never feel sure of finding them 
anywhere. I saw the fishing going on yesterday by the same party, about 
a mile distant from where they were to-day — to the North of the entrance 
to the inner bay. 
The number taken is extremely variable ; the greatest my informant 
has known by one person during an ebb, from forty to fifty quarts. Dur- 
ing frosts, it is said, by far the greatest quantity is taken ; they are 
chiefly eaten by the fishers and their families, but are also carried for sale 
to the neighbouring small towns, including Downpatrick and Ballyna- 
hinch, but not farther. They are sold by the quart measure. 
Aug. 23rd. I saw several young sand eels from two to three inches, 
long, in sandy parts near Annalong ; I endeavoured to catch them in my 
net, but in vain, they so quickly disappeared in the sand at the bottom of 
the pool. 
Sept 20 th. I questioned Mr. Brown of Dundrum and a head-fisherman 
to-day, respecting sand eels here ; the purport of which is, that at spawn- 
ing time in winter (when, however, the fish are so thin as not to be 
sought after generally for food) one man has, during an ebb, taken three 
bushels of them ; in summer, too, one person has sometimes taken so many 
at a time as to require a donkey to draw them home. They come far up the 
bay to spawn : they are becoming gradually scarce, being more regularly 
followed and used as bait than formerly, yet they tell me that down to 
the last twenty years a thousand people, including many from five or six 
miles’ distance, would come once annually for three or four days and 
bivouack on the sand-hills, living on sand eels and the potatoes that they 
would take from the nearest fields. On such occasions party-fights en- 
livened the proceedings, in which Dundrum suffered by attacks on the 
windows, &c., of each party. They were very lawless and uncivilized 
gatherings. 
At spring tides the sand eels are sought for during the year, excepting 
the winter months, when poor from spawning ; a thousand persons are still 
occasionally engaged fishing at the two sides of the inner bay (Dundrum 
and Ballykinlar), and on a good day will average from eighteen to twenty 
quarts * (about a hundred fish to the quart) ; a good fisher will take sixty 
quarts. This season there was but one very successful day, when seventy 
quarts were taken by the best fishers. The usual price at which they are 
sold is 1 d. per quart. Lightning has a great effect upon them in causing 
them to bury themselves in the sands. 
Atmjjfy. Tobianus, distinguished as Snedden from the sand eel by the 
* My other informant (but not so good an authority) agreed respecting the 
number of persons, but thought they would not take one-half of what is above 
stated. 
