NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
IS 
205. Dog Fish. — The papers have lately been telling us of a plague of dog 
fish that have thrown hundreds of men out of employment hy destroying the 
pilchard fi>hery on different parts of our coasts. Various remedies have been 
suggested, one being that the dog fish should be “ attracted to a spot by bait and 
destroyed by dynamite”; another that “factories should be set up to extract 
their oil and turn what remained into manure.” No one has suggested that they 
should be u.sed as food, and it is a pity that those who are in authority do not 
take measures to bring this prominently before the public, for their flesh is palat- 
able and good. Unfortunately, however, the poorer classes, who would most 
benefit by cheap fish, are very reluctant to touch any kind to which they are 
unaccustomed. Many fish commonly used for food, such as hake, ling, skate and 
others, are as predaceous as dog fish,<ind like them are more particular in their 
diet than the common cod, in whqSe omnivorous stomach a tallow candle, a 
guillemot, and even a bunch of keys, have been found. 
Frank Buckland tells us that “small fish dealers cut off the heads, tails and 
fins, of dog fish, and split them into halves : they are then salted and hung out 
to dry, and taste when broiled, like veal chops. The great heads and intestines, 
Sic., are left till picked up by the owners of crab-pots, or stalkers for baits. The 
livers are cleaned and boiled for oil for the boats in winter. There is an 
immense deal of gelatine in these heads and fins, and I tried in vain to persuade 
the men to boil them up ; quoting the example of the Chinese, who esteem shark’s 
fin as a great delicacy.” 
The Chinese are not the only people who have found out the virtue of sharks’ 
fins, for a friend of mine lately writing from Burma, descrilred them as making 
a toothsome and excellent dish. The fins of dog fish would be still better. 
These fish are a common article of food with our neighbours across the Channel. 
Edmund Tho.s. Daobeny. 
206. Death-Watch Beetle. — A friend of mine who has always been a 
keen observer of nature, lived for some years in an old brick and timber farm- 
house, in Cheshire. Hearing the ticking of the “ Death Watch ” very distinctly 
one day, she traced the sound to the woodwork of the window, and tearing off 
the wall-paper where the sound was loudest, discovered the insect, a small beetle, 
which continued its ticking by striking its head against the wood. 
48, A'ings/and Road, Birkenheati, Ellen Hibbert. 
December 13, 1904. 
207. Tapping. — Mr. Hasiie’s solution of “tapping” does not convince 
me. The noises of a grate gradually cooling, or of furniture under change of 
temperature, are familiar ones. They are more or less spasmodic and irregular 
in their intervals, and could not deceive a trained ear as to their cause. I have 
studied these various tappings, and have discovered most of their causes, though 
the spider that is said to tap has hitherto baffled me. I once put a death-watch 
in a pill box, which soon began to tap, and was answered from across the room. 
Presently a second death-watch crawled on to the table, and stopped every now 
and then to tap, and eventually entered the pill box, which I had meanwhile 
opened. They then paired. 
This sunimer, tapping went on in my bedroom for weeks ; some of which at 
all events was caused by death-watches ; though melhinks not all. On one 
occasion I located it in a small picture-frame, in which it went on as I held it in 
my hand. This was caused by a death-watch. The presence of these little weevils 
in a piece of wood can be detected by the borings of the larva, commonly called 
“dry rot,” with which we are only too familiar. 
December, 1904. Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
[It is to be hoped that no one will imagine the borings of the larval Anobium 
to be the only cause of “ dry rot,” a name more strictly applicable to the fungus 
Merulitis lacrymans.— Ed. 
