200 
THE SHEEPS HEAD. 
in Flatlands bay, some years since, and when he had fairly 
exhausted his strength by long and careful skill, and was 
reeling him towards the boat, on the surface of the water, 
lost his noble prize by the rapacity of a villanous shark, who 
seized the fish, and broke away with part of the Hue. In the 
evening of the same day, some net fishermen were hauling 
the seine on a neighboring beach, and captured the piratical 
monster; and on opening him, the sheepshcad was found in 
his stomach, partly digested, with my friend’s hook in his 
jaw.” 
Tbo Buffalo correspondent remarks, of the fresh and salt 
water sheepshcad — 
“ This is a villain in goneral estimation — the pest of the 
fisher for bnssc— a fish that putteth the cook, who would ren- 
der him acceptable at table, in a quandary— from which, I 
am sorry to say, I cannot relieve her, though she be at her 
wit’s end. 
« He is generally brown, gray or reddish above, mid of a 
dead, impure white below. His head is lurge, and his body 
is flattened latterly, though the fryiug-pan rejecteth him. 
His ordinary weight is two or three pounds, though he some- 
times weighs five, and even Bix. His food, his haunts, his 
habits, are similar to those of the black basso, whom he ever 
accompanieth— as though he were intended by nature as a 
foil to set off the merits of that jewel of the Hood. He is 
despised, yea detested by the choleric angler— who pulls 
him out, and then dasheth him upon the stones. 
« The sheepshcad of the sea is a lusty, crafty fish, beprnised 
alike by the fisherman and the epicure. At the turn of the 
tide, he takes the whole soft clam on your hook at a mouth- 
ful, and chews it shell and ail, and pulls like a salmon as yon 
draw him in; and his radiant, deep, and broad-barred sides, 
as he flaps about on the sand of that low islet in the Great 
South bay of Long Island, to which you have just hauled 
