CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIII.The Ocean and its Living Wonders(continued).The Crustaceans, a Crusty Set—Young Crabs and their Peculiarities—Shells and no Shells—Powers of Renewal—The Biter Bit—Cocoa-nut eating Crabs—Do Crabs like Boiling?—The Land Crab and his Migrations—Nigger Excitement—The King Crab—The Hut Crab—A True Yarn—The Hermit or Soldier Crab—Pugnaciousness—Crab War and Human War—Prolific Crustaceans—Raising Lobster-pots—Technical Differences—How do Lobsters shed their Shells?—Fishermen’s Ideas—Habits of the Lobster—Its Fecundity—The Supply for Billingsgate—The Season-“Lobster Frolics”in British North America—Eel-grass—Cray-fish, Prawns, and Shrimps.In the Crustacea we find the lowest form of articulate animals. They possess feet, breathe through gills, and derive their name from their hard crusty covering, which is mainly carbonate of lime with colouring matter. They have nearly all of them claws, which most of them know well how to employ offensively.“They have been compared,”says[pg 151]Figuier,“to the heavily-armed knights of the middle ages—at once audacious and cruel; barbed in steel from head to foot, with visor and corselet, arm-pieces and thigh-pieces—scarcely anything, in fact, is wanting to complete the resemblance.”They possess the power of throwing off their calcareous covering, when they become, for the nonce, as vulnerable as they had been before formidable.41“Among all the curious and quaint forms of animal life to be found in the sea,”says Lord,“few for grotesque oddity can equal the baby crabs, orZoëa, as they are sometimes called. These interesting infants are not the least like their papa or mamma, and no respectable or fully-matured male or femalecrabwould ever own them as his or her offspring. An elfish little creature is the juvenile crab, with a head scarcely deserving the name, and a pair of goggle bull’s-eyes as of two policemen’s lanterns rolled into one, a tail vastly too long for him, and an anti-garotte spear, quite as long as his absurd little body, attached to the spot where his coat-collar should be.... Master Crab’s internal economy is just as curious as his external skeleton. One pair of jaws one would be disposed to think sufficient for any living creature of reasonable requirements, but he possesses eight, and instead of exposing his teeth to the examination of the critical in matters of dentition, he carries them safely stowed away in the interior of his stomach, where they would be excessively hard to get at in cases of crustacean toothache. With such appliances as these the food cannot well be otherwise than perfectly masticated. A crab’s liver is an odd organ to contemplate, and constitutes a considerable portion of the soft interior of the shell-like box in which the heart and other viscera are lodged. That well-known delicacy known as the‘cream’or‘fat’of the crab is liver, and nothing else. The lungs, or gills, are formed by those fringe-like appendages popularly known as the‘dead men’s fingers.’The shell-shifting process before referred to is common to all crustaceans; and our friend the crab, when he feels his corselet getting rather tight for him, manages by some extraordinary process not only to extricate himself from it, together with his shell-gauntlets, and the powerful nippers with which he is provided, but performs other feats, compared with which those of the Davenport Brothers sink into utter insignificance.”Nearly all the crustaceans are hardy and destructive, and fight not merely their enemies, but among each other. It matters little to them whether they lose a claw or a tail, for after a few weeks of repose those members grow again. Tandon records the fact that lobsters“which in an unfortunate encounter lost a limb, sick and debilitated, reappear at the end of a few months with a perfect limb, vigorous, and ready for service.”On the Spanish coast a certain crab is caught for its claw alone, which is considered excellent eating; this is pulled off, and the mutilated animal thrown back into the sea, likely enough to be retaken, and the same process repeated at some future time. Crustaceans are nearly all carnivorous, and are by no means particular what they eat. Some of them, however, show considerable appreciation for the oyster. Sometimes they eat each other. Mr. Rymer Jones tells a story of one which attacked and commenced to eat one[pg 152]slightly smaller than himself, and was then himself attacked and eaten by a companion, realising the old adage concerning fleas—“And these have smaller still to bite ’em,And so proceed,ad infinitum.”Some crustaceans, however, adopt a vegetable diet. The Robber Crab of the Polynesian Islands can not merely open a cocoa-nut, but also enjoy its contents. The crab begins by tearing off the fibre at the extremity where the fruit is, always choosing the right hand. When this is removed, it strikes it with its great claws until an opening is made; it then inserts its slender claws, and by wriggling and turning itself about removes the contents of the nut.CRABS (Cancer pagurus).CRABS (Cancer pagurus).The proper mode of boiling crabs has long been a subject on which doctors have disagreed. Who, then, shall decide? That there is cruelty associated with the taking away of life it would be hard to deny, but the correctness of choice between gradual stewing in slowly-heated water and being plunged at once into the seething, bubbling cauldron requires“the revelations of a boiled crab”to clear up; and until a crustacean production under that or a like title appears, we shall continue to plunge our armour-clad victims in water at 212 degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, and leave the question as to the propriety of our so doing to those who are disposed to grapple with the subject for its own sake.The West India Islands possess in the Land Crab (Gecarcinus ruricola) a kind of crustacean highlander, who retreats into the uplands at certain times in the year.“As the spawning season approaches a mighty gathering of the clans takes place, and whole legions, unwarned by fiery cross or blazing beacon, hasten forth to join the living tide flowing onward towards the sea. Through the tangled jungle, down the rock-strewed ravine, over fallen tree-trunks, and among the dense undergrowth of the forest, in ceaseless, creeping, crawling, scuttling thousands, still they come onward, and ever onward, as the bright stars shine out to light them on their way. Banks, hedges, walls, and even houses, are passed straight over in this crustacean steeplechase, no flags being needed to keep the mail-clad competitors to the true course. Instinct the guide, and the blue sea for a goal, nothing stops the race.“Cuffee and his companions, who have been gossiping and story-telling beneath their cocoa-leaf roofs until half asleep, appear to become most violent and incurable lunatics, on suddenly becoming aware of the nocturnal exodus. They leap high in the air, shout, scream, and dance like fiends, whilst the most ready-witted of the crew dash off to‘de massa’with the startling news.‘Hi, golly, sa! de crab! de crab! He come for sure, this time, sure ’nuff. Plenty catch um bime by;’and Cuffee keeps his word to the letter, and captures the pilgrims by the basketful, in spite of their claws. And black-faced, woolly-headed Aunt Lilly, the cook, shows her teeth, like ivory dominoes in an ebony box, as visions of white-snow-like rice, cocoa-nut milk, capsicum-pods, and stewpans, pass in pleasing and appetising review before her; and‘massa’himself takes an extra pull at the cold-sangaree jug, sleeps pleasantly, and dreams of the crab-feast on the morrow.”THE WEST INDIAN LAND CRAB (Gecarcinus ruricola).THE WEST INDIAN LAND CRAB (Gecarcinus ruricola).The King Crab of the eastern seas grows sometimes to an enormous size, while the lance-shaped spear with which he is furnished is used by the Malays as a warlike instrument. Then, for a contrast, there’s the little nut-crab, with his queer little legs tucked up under his[pg 153]body, which rambling jack-tars sometimes gather for their friends at home, under the idea that their shells, when cut and polished, will make handsome brooches and shirt-pins. Major Lord tells a good story of a dry old salt of a quartermaster, on the Indian station, who“chanced one day, when on shore for a cruise, to become possessed of a goodly number of theseluckystones, as he called them, and by way of securing his treasures, placed them in an old silk handkerchief, and stowed them away, with a few dollars and sundry cakes of cavendish, in the corner of his chest. It so happened that some piratical shipmate, not proof against the allurements of honeydew and silver, but totally indifferent to natural history, seized his opportunity and spirited off the tobacco and money, but left the lucky-stones behind. The next day, when our old friend came for his accustomed supply of the weed, he, to his horror, astonishment, and indignation, found the supposed pebbles in active motion, performing foot-races over his best jacket, the handkerchief spread open, and, alas! empty.‘Well!’exclaimed he;‘blow me if this aint too much of the monkey! Why, look ye here, messmates! These here blessed stones have come to life, every man Jack of ’em. They’ve chawed up all my bacca, and spent every mag of my money! and now I’ll[pg 154]heave the beggars to Davy Jones’s locker. Overboard is where I means to pitch ’em.’And so he did, no doubt to the intense gratification of the falsely-accused crabs.”THE HERMIT CRAB (Pagurus Bernhardus).THE HERMIT CRAB (Pagurus Bernhardus).The Hermit, or Soldier, Crab, with the exception of a kind of cuirass, or head-piece, has a soft, yielding skin. Knowing his own weakness, he invariably entrenches himself in some safe place, not unfrequently emptying the shell of some other marine animal. When he outgrows his borrowed habitation he looks out for some larger dwelling. He is a very timid creature, and retires at the least alarm. On the other hand, among his kind he is strong, voracious, and cruel. Two hermit crabs cannot meet without a fight brewing, but it rarely comes off.“Each extends his long pincers, and seems to try to touch the other, much as a spider does, when it seeks to seize a fly on its most vulnerable side; but each finding the other armed in proof and perfectly protected, though eager to fight, usually adopts the better part of valour, and prudently withdraws. They often have true passages of arms, nevertheless, in which claws are spread out and displayed in the most threatening manner, the two adversaries tumbling head over heels, and rolling one upon the other, but they get more frightened than hurt.”Mr. Gosse, however, describes a struggle which had a tragic end. A hermit met a brother hermit pleasantly lodged in a shell much more spacious than his own. He seized it by the head with his powerful claws, tore it from its asylum with the speed of lightning, and took its place not less promptly, leaving the dispossessed unfortunate struggling on the sand in convulsions of agony.“Our battles,”says Bonnet,“have rarely such important objects in view;theyfight each other for a house.”A young poet of to-day42sings ofourwars—“Tell me, tell me, is this glory?Is it honour, is it fame?Has mankind, through ages hoary,Given to war its fitting name?Twist it, turn it, warp it, bind it,Greet its triumphs with acclaim,Yet at last the world will find itOnly murder, all the same!”Both crabs and lobsters are amazingly prolific, and lay an enormous number of eggs: it is computed that each female produces from 12,000 to 20,000 in a season; and yet these shell-fish are always dear in London! In France, Figuier tells us, the size of the marketable lobster is regulated by law, and fixed at a minimum of eight inches in length: all under that length are contraband. The London market is supplied from every part of our coasts, and very largely from Norway. At Kamble, near Southampton, one owner has storing-ponds, or tanks, for 50,000 at a time; and he has his own smacks constantly running to the coasts of France, Scotland, and Ireland.The Lobster (Homarus vulgaris) is found in great abundance all round our coasts. Who that has frequented our seaside watering-places has not either gone out to assist in hauling up the lobster-pots, or, at all events, seen the fishermen returning with their spoils? And whatcanbe finer than a lobster boiled, say not more than half an hour after his capture from the briny? He tastes very unlike the poor creature which has been conveyed by boat[pg 155]or train to London, and knocked about in barrows, carts, markets, and shops, until he wishes they would boil him, and have done with it at once. Lobster-pots are, practically, wicker-basket traps. The hole at the bottom allows free ingress, but makes it difficult for the victim to get out. They are baited with garbage, and the position of each on the rocks or sand below is marked by a buoy. Each fisherman has his own private mark on them; and woe to the lobster-thief, as to the crab-thief! Sometimes nets are used for catching lobsters.Mr. Pennant says that large lobsters are in their best season from the middle of October to the beginning of May. The smaller ones are good all the summer. If they are four-and-a-half inches long from the top of the head to the end of the back shell they are called“sizable”lobsters; if under four inches,“half-size,”and two are reckoned as one of size. Under four inches, they are called“pawks.”There is little doubt that up to a certain age lobsters shed their shells annually, but the mode of performance is not quite understood to-day.“It is supposed that the old shell is cast, and that the animal retires to some lurking-place till the new covering acquires consistence to contend with his armour-clad congeners.... The most probable conjecture is that the shell sloughs off piecemeal, as it does in the cray-fish. The greatest mystery of all, perhaps, is the process by which the lobster withdraws the fleshy part of its claws from their calcareous covering. Fishermen say the lobster pines before casting its shell, and thus gets thin, so as to permit of its withdrawing its members from it.”He sheds tears first, and shell second.The common English lobster, as seen in the fishmonger’s shop, is very unlike his relatives beneath the waves.“The curled-up form,”says Major Lord,“in which he is seen when so exposed is not that usually assumed in his own element, except in the act of exerting its immense powers of retrograde motion. These are so great that one sudden downward sweep of its curiously-constructed oar-like tail is sufficient to send it like an arrow, three or four and twenty feet, with the most extraordinary precision, thereby enabling our friend to retreat with the greatest rapidity into nooks, corners, and crevices among the rocks, where pursuit would be hopeless. His eyes being arranged on foot-stalks, or stems, are free from the inconvenient trammels of sockets, and possess a radius of vision commanding both front and rear, and from their compound form (being made up of a number of square lenses) are extremely penetrating and powerful. The slightest shadow passing over the pool in which the lobster may chance to be crawling or swimming will frequently cause one of these backward shoots to be made, and the lobster vanishes into some cleft or cavity with a rapidity of motion which no harlequin could ever, in his wildest dreams, hope to achieve. Down among the deep channels, between the crags at the sea’s bottom, alarms, except from the sea-robbers themselves, are not to be dreaded. Here the lobsters are at home, and in such spots the wicker trap, or the trunk net, may be laid down for them: nets of this kind are in general use. They are made by fastening a number of stout wooden hoops to longitudinal bars, and covering them with network. Their internal construction is much like that of the crab-pot, only there are two entrances instead of one, and twine is used instead of willows or twigs to prevent the prisoners from escaping. Heavy stones are attached to them as sinkers. Fish offal is used as bait, and corks at the end of lines serve to point out their position and haul them up by.[pg 156]Lobsters are prolific creatures, and it is well that they are so, considering the enormous quantities consumed every day in England alone.“It has been computed that each fully-matured female will produce from 18,000 to 20,000 eggs, and there is little doubt but that with proper management and the expenditure of a very small capital artificial fecundation of the ova might be most successfully and profitably conducted in this country. Much attention has of late been paid to this subject in France, and many most interesting experiments in connection with it have been tried. The number of lobsters brought every season to Billingsgate Market will serve to give some idea of the importance of lobster fishing, and the sums of money which must change hands in connection with it. Calculations show that from the coasts of England, Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands 150,000 lobsters per season reach Billingsgate, exclusive of the supply of Norway lobsters, which are even more abundantly supplied, over 600,000 per season being imported. It not unfrequently happens that one day’s supply for that great emporium of sea dainties reaches as high as 25,000, and here at early morning, long before mighty London is fairly up for the day, a scene of bustle and activity may be witnessed which well repays the early riser. Steam in clouds floats above the vast loads of newly-boiled crustaceans and molluscs; and carts of every size and pattern block the way.”The regular lobster season lasts from the month of March to August. About the middle or latter end of the last-mentioned month the shifting of shells takes place, and the fish is unfit for human food; but, like the silkworms after a change of skin, they commence feeding in the most voracious manner directly the new garment is durable enough to admit of their taking their walks abroad, and their temporary seclusion and compulsory abstinence are amply made up by a course of heavy feeding. The lost plumpness and condition soon return. Unlike some crustaceans who are coldly indifferent to the welfare of their offspring, the mamma lobster keeps her little brood about her until the youthful lobsterkins are big enough to start in life for themselves.The coasts of British North America, as well as many portions of the seaboard of the United States, abound in mail-clad inhabitants of many kinds. In some localities great amusement is at times afforded by their capture—a sort of picnic, or lobster frolic, being organised. A boat, with plenty of eatables and drinkables, and a capacious pot, are provided, and long poles with their ends split prepared. On the boat being propelled slowly through the shallow water, a sharp look-out is kept on the regions below, and on the lobster being discovered, the split end of the pole is lowered quietly, and with the greatest caution, until just over the unsuspecting victim’s back, when by a sudden downward thrust the forceps-like instrument securely nips him, and he is brought to the surface in spite of his claws and the pinches he inflicts on the tough, unyielding wood. Some overhanging rock or pleasant nook on the shore is usually selected as a place in which to dine and cook the proceeds of the lobster hunt.[pg 157]LOBSTER (Homarus vulgaris) AND PRAWNS (Palæmon serratus).LOBSTER (Homarus vulgaris) AND PRAWNS (Palæmon serratus).[pg 158]The bays, shallows, and mouths of rivers on the coast of Prince Edward’s Island abound in a species of seaweed known amongst the inhabitants as“eel-grass,”on which vast numbers of lobsters feed as in a rich sea-garden. To these favoured hunting grounds the lobster-catchers betake themselves, and by wading little more than half-leg deep gather as many as they require. A bushel basket has been filled in this way in less than an hour.Like the branching growths of submarine life which form the connecting link between the vegetable and animal kingdoms, we find crustaceans dwelling, so to speak, on the border-lands of other races, and linking the shrimp, crab, and lobster families together; partaking of the nature of each, but being identical with neither; such are the so-calledSquat Lobsters, orGalathea. Their singular alertness renders capture somewhat difficult. Like the lobster, they possess extraordinary powers of vision and retrograde movement. The horns are extremely long, and so sensitive that the slightest touch seems to reveal at once the nature of an approaching object, and enables the alarmed squat to seek a safe sanctuary between the rock clefts, from which it is by no means easy to withdraw him.Thespined lobster,crawfish,cray, orcrowder, will, from its thorn-coated shell, long horns, powerful nippers, and generally formidable appearance, be familiar to most of our readers. Like most other crustaceans, the cray delights in a home among rugged sunken rocks, and is taken in the traps laid for ordinary lobsters and crabs. Their flesh, being of harder texture and sweeter flavour, is objected to by professed lobster-eaters; still, a well-conditioned spined lobster is by no means to be despised. Some portions of the Pacific Ocean, and the warm seas of the East, contain them in vast numbers. Many spots on the coast of South America, and the bays and inlets of the island of Juan Fernandez, literally swarm with them. Some idea may be formed of the abundance of animated creatures of this and other kinds to be taken in these seas by the following account of the fishing to be obtained in them, given by the Hon. F. Walpole:—“The fishing afforded the best return for labour, and a boat might be filled in four hours with hook and line only. Fish swarmed of every size and colour, and seemingly of every variety of appetite, for they took any bait. The bottom was literally lined with crawfish of a large size; some must have weighed five pounds at least. There needed no hook—a piece of anything let down on a string to the bottom was enough; they saw it, grasped it, and kept their hold till you had seized them by their long feelers and borne them into the boat, where they crawled about and extended their feelers as if in search of more bait.... We had crawfish for breakfast, crawfish for dinner, crawfish for supper, and crawfish for any incidental meal we could cram in between.”The coral reefs fringing the island of Mauritius afford shelter to numbers of the family of crawfish, which in both size and splendour of colouring far excel those taken in our seas.The prawn and shrimp are included in the same order as the lobster and the crab, and species of these crustaceans are found in all seas. They are the scavengers of the ocean, and pick and devour any dead matter in the sea; hence they are particularly valuable in the aquarium. The art of shrimping will no doubt be familiar to all our readers, from visits made to our south-coast watering-places. In tropical climates the prawn attains the size of a small lobster—up to nine or ten inches in length, three being considered sufficient for a meal. Prawns are sold in Dublin six and seven inches in length, and are considered splendid feeding.[pg 159]CHAPTER XIV.Ocean Life.—The Harvest of the Sea.Fishes and their Swimming Apparatus—The Bladder—Scientific Classification—Cartilaginous Fish—The Torpedo—A Living Galvanic Battery—The Shark—His Love for Man in a Gastronomic Sense—Stories of their Prowess—Catching a Shark—Their Interference with Whaling—The Tiger-Shark—African Worship of the Monster—The Dog-fish—The Sturgeon—Enormous Fecundity—Caviare—The Bony Fishes—The Flying Fish: its Feats; its Enemies—Youth of a Salmon—The Parr, the Smolt, and the Grilse—Flourishes in the Sea—The Ponds at Stormontfield—The Salmon’s Enemies—The Ettrick Shepherd—Canned Salmon, and where it comes from—The Fish a Drug in N. W. America—Canoes impeded by them—The Fisheries of the Columbia River—The Fishing Season—Modes of Catching Salmon—The Factories and Processes employed.And now we proceed to still higher organisations. The fish must have their turn in a work treating of their natural home, the ocean.43Fishes, intended always to live in water, have wonderful organs to aid them in swimming.“The anterior limbs,”says Figuier,“which correspond with the arms in man and the wings in birds, are attached to each side of the trunk, immediately behind the head, and form the pectoral fins. The posterior limbs occupy the lower surface of the body, and form the ventral fins. The latter, which are always over the ventral line, may be placed before, beneath, or, as is most usual, behind the former. Fishes possess, besides these two pair of fins, odd fins. The fins which are found on the back or dorsum are called the back or dorsal fins, those at the end of the tail are the caudal fins; finally, there is frequently another attached to the lower extremity of the body, which is called the anal fin. These fins are always nearly of the same structure, consisting generally of a fold of the skin, supported by slender, flexible, cartilaginous, or osseous rays, connected by a thin membrane.”The muscles which move these fins are powerful. Further, nearly all species of fish possess a swimming bladder, over which the animal has control, and can thereby increase or diminish the specific gravity of its body. Immediately behind the head are the gill openings; respiration is effected by water, in its natural state always charged with air, being taken in at the mouth, which passes over the gills, and is afterwards ejected. The eyes in fish are usually very large.The scientific classification of fishes usually adopted is that of Muller. He divided them into five groups, theLeptocardia,Cyclostomata,Selachia,Ganoidea, andTeleostea. The first of these is represented by a single genus,Amphioxus, a little slender gelatinous fish, rarely over two inches in length, and commonly found on all sandy coasts. The second order is characterised as serpentine, void of fins, and with a mouth formed for suction. The lamprey is a familiar example.The third order,Selachia, includes a number of cartilaginous fish, varying much in form; the rays, dog-fish, skate, torpedo, shark, and saw-fish belong to this important division. The torpedo has the power of giving a strong electrical shock. Redi, an Italian naturalist of the seventeenth century, first studied them carefully. He caught and landed an electric ray, and pressing it with his hand, experienced a tingling sensation, which extended to his arms and shoulders, and was followed by a disagreeable trembling. This electric power dies with the animal. Dr. Walsh made some interesting experiments with them. He placed[pg 160]a living torpedo on a clean wet towel, and connected brass wires with it. Round the torpedo were eight persons, standing on isolating substances. One end of the wire was placed in a basin full of water. The first person had a finger of one hand in this basin, and a finger of the other in a second basin, also full of water. The second person had a finger in the last-named basin, and a finger of the other hand in a third basin, and so on round the circle of eight persons. The end of the second wire was plunged into the last basin of the series, thus establishing a complete electric circuit. At the moment when the experimenter touched the torpedo a tolerably strong shock was felt by all participating. When the torpedo was placed on an isolated supporter, it showed its energy by communicating to several persons forty or fifty shocks in the short space of a minute and a half.The familyCarcharidæincludes the true sharks, some species of which attain to a length of twenty, or even thirty, feet. They are the terror of all other fish and molluscs.“But the prey which has the greatest charm for him is man; the shark loves him dearly, but it is with the affection of the gourmand. If we may believe some travellers, when several varieties of human food comes in its way, the shark prefers the European to the Asiatic, and both to the negro.”He has been known to jump clean aboard a fisherman’s boat, and even to snap up a sailor from the shrouds. Commerson relates the following:—The corpse of a negro had been suspended from a yard-armtwenty feetabove the level of the sea. A shark was seen making every effort to reach the body, which eventually he did, and tore it limb from limb in presence of the horror-stricken crew. The mouth of the shark is placed in the lower part of the head, and the animal has to turn itself in the water before he can seize an object above him. On the African coast the negroes take advantage of this fact; they swim towards him, and seize the moment when he turns to rip up his belly with a large strong knife. The adult shark has six rows of murderous-looking teeth, forming a perfect arsenal of deadly weapons.Captain Basil Hall describes the mode by which sharks are sometimes captured.“The sharp-curved dorsal fin of a huge shark was seen rising about six inches above the water, and cutting the glazed surface of the sea by as fine a line as if a sickle had been drawn along it.‘Messenger, run to the cook for a piece of pork,’cried the captain, taking the command with as much glee as if an enemy’s cruiser had been in sight.‘Where’s your hook, quartermaster?’‘Here, sir, here,’cried the fellow, feeling the point, and declaring it was as sharp as any lady’s needle, and in the next instant piercing with it a huge junk of pork weighing four or five pounds. The hook, which is as large as one’s little finger, has a curvature about as large as a man’s hand when half closed, and is six or eight inches in length, while a formidable line, furnished with three or four feet of chain attached to the end of the mizen topsail halyard, is now cast into the ship’s wake.“Sometimes the very instant the bait is cast over the stern the shark flies at it with such eagerness that he actually springs partially out of the water. This, however, is rare. On these occasions he gorges the bait, the hook, and a foot or two of the chain, without any mastication, and darts off with the treacherous prize with such prodigious velocity that it makes the rope crack again as soon as the coil is drawn out. Much dexterity is required in the hand which holds the line at this moment. A bungler is apt[pg 161]to be too precipitate, and jerk away the hook before it has got far enough into the shark’s stomach. The secret of the sport is to let the monster gulp down the whole bait, and then to give the line a violent pull, by which the barbed point buries itself in the coat of the stomach. When the hook is first fixed it spins out like the log-line of a ship going twelve knots.“The suddenness of the jerk with which the shark is brought up often turns him quite over. No sailor, however, thinks of hauling one on board merely by the rope fastened to the hook. To prevent the line breaking, the hook snapping, or the jaw being torn away, a running bowline is adopted. This noose is slipped down the rope and passed over the monster’s head, and is made to join at the point of junction of the tail with the body; and now the first part of the fun is held to be completed. The vanquished enemy is easily drawn up over the taffrail, and flung on deck, to the delight of the crew.”Even then he is sometimes a very formidable enemy. The flesh of the shark, though sometimes eaten, is coarse and leathery.THE COMMON SHARK (Carcharias vulgaris).THE COMMON SHARK (Carcharias vulgaris).On several of the smaller islands of the Spanish Main whaling stations are established. After the huge fish have been captured, they are towed by the boats to one of these stations, and the blubber is stripped off and carried on shore to the boiling-house in large white blocks, where a simple apparatus is set up for“trying-out”the oil. It sometimes happens that immediately after the whale has been killed the sharks surround it in such numbers, and devour the blubber with such rapacity, that if the distance be great and the currents adverse, the greater part has been eaten off before the whale can be towed ashore; and the labour of the fishermen is thus thrown away.The tiger-shark is a more formidable monster than others of its tribe, because of its power of seizing its prey without turning on its back or side. It is enabled to do this from the great size of its mouth, and from its position, which is near the end of the snout, instead of underneath, as in other varieties of the shark.“As soon as the carcase of the whale has been stripped of its blubber, it is towed out at high water to a sufficient distance from the station to ensure of its being carried away by the falling tide. This is necessary, for the stench from so large a mass of putrefying flesh, exposed as it has been to the intense action of a tropical sun for three or four days, is more than unpleasant.“Now is the opportunity for the shark-hunters. They take possession of the remains, tow them to some convenient nook of the Bocas, as the channels between the islands are called, and there anchor them. All is now prepared, and nothing remains but eagerly and silently to watch for the assembly of the ravenous brutes to their midnight orgies.”The liver of the shark yields a most valuable oil, largely used in the colony as a[pg 162]substitute for cod-liver oil. The liver of a shark fifteen feet long will yield from twelve to sixteen gallons of oil.The canoes used for shark-hunting are some twenty feet in length. In the bow a deep groove is cut, to guide the rope after the fish has been struck. A coil of fifteen fathoms of rope, carefully arranged under the thwarts, is secured at one end to a piece of strong chain, at the other end of which is a harpoon. A lance is kept on board to assist in giving thecoup de grâceto the shark when he has exhausted himself sufficiently.The inhabitants of many parts of the African coasts worship the shark, and consider its stomach the road to heaven. Three or four times a year they row out and offer the shark poultry and goats to satisfy his appetite. This is not all; a child is once a year sacrificed to the monster, which has been specially fattened for this occasion from its birth to the age of ten. On thefêteday, the unfortunate little victim is bound to a post on a sandy point at low water; as the tide rises the sharks arrive. The child may shriek, and the mother may weep, but it is of no avail; even its own parent thinks that the horrible sacrifice will ensure her child’s entry into heaven.THE DOG-FISH (Acanthias vulgaris).THE DOG-FISH (Acanthias vulgaris).The dog-fish—from which we derive the skin known asshagreen, used for spectacle and other cases—the furious and voracious hammerhead, and the saw-fish, belong to the same great order. The last named will attack any inhabitant of the deep whatever, and even dares to measure his strength with the whale. Its length is from twelve to fifteen feet, while its weapon of defence is sometimes as much as two yards in length. Occasionally it dashes itself against the side of a ship with such fury as to leave its sword broken in the timber.Of the fourth great order,Ganoidea, the sturgeon is the most prominent example. It is essentially a sea-fish, although ascending rivers at stated periods, as does the salmon. It is particularly noticeable for the number of bony plates or scales on its back and belly. In the sea the sturgeon feeds on herrings, mackerel, and other fish; in the rivers on salmon. It is caught in traps, or in nets. The prepared roe, cleaned, washed in vinegar, and partially dried, is the caviare of the Russians. The eggs of a female sturgeon will weigh over one-third of its entire body, and as they sometimes reach a weight of nearly 3,000 pounds, the preparation of caviare becomes an important and profitable industry.THE GLOBE-FISH (Tetrodon) AND SUN-FISH (Orthagoriscus mola).THE GLOBE-FISH (Tetrodon) AND SUN-FISH (Orthagoriscus mola).THE PIPE FISH (Syngnathus acus).THE PIPE FISH (Syngnathus acus).The fifth order,Teleostea, or bony fishes, constitutes a lengthy series. Among it must be placed the globular and phosphorescent sun-fish, the spiny globe-fish, the bony trunk-fish, and the cuirassed pipe-fish, the sea-horse, which has a head not unlike a horse, and floats vertically, the flying-fish, the eels, herrings, salmon, carp, cod, flat-fish, mullets, tunnies, and others too numerous to mention. It is for man’s purposes the most important of all the orders.THE FLYING-FISH (Exocœtus exiliens.)THE FLYING-FISH (Exocœtus exiliens.)The flying-fish have been incidentally mentioned before in this work. Captain Basil Hall observed a flight of 200 yards; they have come on board a vessel fourteen or fifteen feet, and into the chains of a line-of-battle ship twenty feet above the water. They are considerably harassed by the attacks of other fish, and when they take to the air often fall victims to gulls and other sea-birds. Sharks and dolphins are their particular enemies. Their glittering, silvery brilliancy is most beautiful in the brightness of tropical seas.[pg 163]Among the most important bony fishes must certainly be first placed the salmon, which includes three well-known species,Salmo salar(the salmon itself),S. fario(the salmon trout), andS. trutta(the trout). The early life of the salmon is interesting. The infant fry is primarily, of course, very helpless, and during the first two or three weeks of its existence carries about with it, as a provision for food, a portion of the yolk of the egg from which it was hatched. This generally lasts it from twenty to forty days. It is two years before the youngster ventures out to sea. In the first stage the young salmon is called aparr; during the second it is asmolt,i.e., a parr plus a covering of silvery scales. The smolt, which in the course of its two or more years’ stay in the river has only attained a growth of six or eight inches, returns from the sea in a couple of months weighing three or four pounds, and after six months ten or twelve pounds. It is now agrilse.Dr. Bertram says of the salmon’s growth:—“The sea-feeding must be favourable, and the condition of the fish well suited to the salt-water to ensure such rapid growth—a rapidity which every visit of the fish to the ocean serves but to confirm. Various fish, whilst in the grilse state, have been marked to prove this; and at every migration they returned to their breeding-stream with added weight and improved health. What the salmon feeds upon whilst in the salt-water is not well known, as the digestion of the fish is so rapid as to prevent the discovery of food in their stomachs when they are captured and opened. Guesses have been made, and it is likely that these approximate to the truth; but the old story of the rapid voyage of the salmon to the North Pole and back again turns out, like the theory upon which was built up the herring migration romance, to be a mere myth.“None of our naturalists have yet attempted to elucidate that mystery of salmon life which converts one-half of the fish into sea-going smolts, whilst as yet the other moiety remain as parr. It has been investigated so far at the breeding-ponds at Stormontfield, but without resolving the question. There is another point of doubt as to salmon life which I shall also have a word to say about—namely, whether or not that fish makes two visits annually to the sea; likewise, whether it be probable that a smolt remains in the salt water for nearly a year before it becomes a grilse. A salmon only stays, as it is popularly supposed, a very short time in the salt water; and as it is one of the quickest-swimming fishes we have, it is able to reach a distant river in a very short space of time, therefore it is most desirable we should know what it does with itself when it is not migrating from one water to the other; because, according to the opinion of some naturalists, it would speedily become so deteriorated in the river as to be unequal to the slightest exertion....“At every stage of its career the salmon is surrounded by enemies. At the very moment of spawning, the female is watched by a horde of devourers, who instinctively flock to the breeding-grounds in order to feast on the ova. The hungry pike, the lethargic perch, the greedy trout, the very salmon itself, are lying in wait, all agape for the palatable roe, and greedily swallowing whatever quantity the current carries down. Then the waterfowl eagerly pounces on the precious deposit the moment it has been forsaken by the fish; and if it escape being gobbled up by such cormorants, the spawn[pg 164]may be washed away by a flood, or the position of the bed may be altered, and the ova be destroyed, perhaps for want of water. As an instance of the loss incidental to salmon-spawning in the natural way, I may just mention that a whiting of about three-quarters of a pound weight has been taken in the Tay with three hundred impregnated salmon ova in its stomach! If this fish had been allowed to dine and breakfast at this rate during the whole of the spawning season it would have been difficult to estimate the loss our fisheries would have sustained by his voracity. No sooner do the eggs ripen, and the young fish come to life, than they are exposed, in their defenceless state, to be preyed upon by all the enemies already enumerated; while, as parr, they have been taken out of our streams in such quantities as to be available for the purpose of pig-feeding and manure! Some economists estimate that only one egg out of every thousand becomes a full-sized salmon. Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart calculated that 150,000,000 of salmon ova are annually deposited in the river Tay; of which only 50,000,000, or one-third, come to life and attain the parr stage; that 20,000,000 of these parr become in time smolts, and that their number is ultimately diminished to 100,000; of which 70,000 are caught, the other 30,000 being left for breeding purposes. Sir Humphry Davy calculated that if a salmon produced 17,000 roe, only 800 of these would arrive at maturity. It is well, therefore, that the female fish yields 1,000 eggs for each pound of her weight; for a lesser degree of fecundity, keeping in view the enormous waste of life indicated by these figures, would long since—especially taking into account the destructive modes of fishing that used a few years ago to be in use—have resulted in the extinction of this valuable fish.“The first person who‘took a thought about the matter’—i.e., as to whether the[pg 165]parr was or was not the young of the salmon—and arrived at a solid conclusion, was James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who, in his usual impulsive way, proceeded to verify his opinions. He had, while herding sheep, many opportunities of watching the fishing streams, and, like most of his class, he wielded his fishing-rod with considerable skill. While angling in the tributaries of some of the Border salmon-streams, he had often caught the parr as it was changing into the smolt, and had, after close observation, come to the conclusion that the little parr was none other than the infant salmon. Mr. Hogg did not keep his discovery a secret, and the more his facts were controverted by the naturalists of the day the louder became his proclamations. He had suspected all his life that parr were salmon in their first stage. He would catch a parr with a few straggling scales upon it; he would look at this fish, and think it queer; instantly he would catch another, a little better covered with silver scales, but all loose, and not adhering to the body. Again, he would catch a smolt, manifestly a smolt, all covered with the white silver scales, yet still rather loose upon the skin, which would come off in his hand. Removing these scales, he found the parr with the blue finger-marks below them, and that the fish were young salmon then became as manifest to the shepherd as that a lamb, if suffered to live, would become a sheep. Wondering at this, he marked a great number of the lesser fish, and offered rewards (characteristically enough, of whisky) to the peasantry to bring him such as had evidently undergone the change predicted by him. When this conclusion was settled in his mind, the Shepherd at once proclaimed his new-gained knowledge.‘What will the fishermen of Scotland think’said he,‘when I assure them, on the faith of long experience and observation, and on the word of one who can have no interest in instilling an untruth into their minds, that every insignificant parr with which the cockney fisher fills his basket is a salmon lost!’These crude attempts of the impulsive Shepherd of Ettrick—and he was hotly opposed by the late Mr. Buist, of Stormontfield—were not without their fruits; indeed, they were so successful as quite to convince him that parr were young salmon in their firststage.”[pg 166]The following amusing dialogue on the habits of the salmon once took place between the Ettrick Shepherd and a friend:—“Shepherd:—‘I maintain that ilka saumon comes aye back again frae the sea till spawn in its ain water.’“Friend:—‘Toots, toots, Jamie! hoo can it manage till do that? Hoo, in the name o’ wonder, can a fish, travelling up a turbid water frae the sea, know when it reaches the entrance to its birthplace, or that it has arrived at the tributary that was its cradle?’“Shepherd:—‘Man, the great wonder to me is no hoo the fish get back, but hoo they find their way till the sea first ava, seein’ that they’ve never been there afore!’”The canned salmon, now generally popular in England, and which, though some few years ago an expensive luxury, is now within the reach of all, comes principally from the Columbia River, Oregon, and other parts of the North Pacific coasts. In North-Western America the fish is a perfect drug in the market. In a city like San Francisco it sells for eight cents (4d.) per pound. Higher up the coast a large fish is obtained for a quarter to half a dollar. Further north a piece of tobacco or a few needles will purchase a twenty or thirty pound salmon. They are so abundant that the writer has seen them on the beaches of streams and creeks falling into Frazer River, British Columbia, by the score, bleeding, gasping, and dying, having literally crowded each other out of the water.“Schools”of them are often so densely packed together, that they impede the progress of canoes and boats.The salmon fisheries of the Columbia, Oregon, itself one of the grandest rivers in the world, give employment to 4,000 men during the season, and nearly all the canned salmon consumed in Europe comes from it.44There are dozens of rivers on the north-west coast equally available, and the business even now is in its infancy; while salted, pickled, or smoked salmon, hardly ever reaches England from there at all. As will appear, there are splendid opportunities on that coast for hundreds of new-comers, it may almost be said with or without capital. It is needless to state that the former is always to be preferred. Where isn’t it?Some ten or a dozen varieties of salmon and salmon-trout, Mr. Murphy tells us, enter the rivers of North-Western America, but only one is selected for commercial purposes. Two of the most delicate-eating varieties—the silvery-white and spring salmons—are never packed in tins, because their schools are less abundant and the fish themselves smaller. The hook-nosed and dog salmons are rarely eaten, except by Indians; while the man has not yet been discovered who would tackle the hump-back. The blue-back, or weak-toothed salmon, an inferior fish also, is only exported to the Sandwich Islands, where the natives are said to really prefer its lean and fibrous flesh to the more delicately-flavoured and succulent kinds. The salmon principally caught is distinguished by the Indians as the“Tyhee,”or chief; it is abundant, large, and most excellent eating; it possesses those“all-round”qualifications which particularly fit it for commerce and cooking. It is theSalmo quinnatof the naturalists.The fishery season on the Columbia lasts from the beginning of April to the end of[pg 167]July, and the fisheries extend along the river for a hundred miles or more. Some of the curing establishments employ their own men to tend the nets, while others purchase from fishermen, the price for fish weighing from fifteen to forty pounds ranging from 25 cents to 50 cents (approximately one to two shillings). These prices would seem ridiculously low were it not for the abundance of the fish and the ease with which they are taken. A party of four men may secure from 300 to 2,000 salmon in twenty-four hours! Take the lowest estimate—300 at 25 cents. This gives 75 dollars (or £15) to divide among the four fishermen. But this would be a very poor catch. A thousand fish are no uncommon haul. This at the lowest price paid would give 250 dollars (£50) to be divided. Of course there is the wear and tear of boat and fishing gear to be considered.Large quantities of the fish are caught in weirs. The Indians, also, knowing that the salmon avoids currents if possible, build out into the river from the shore, for ten or a dozen feet, walls of stone a few inches in height. The salmon crowd into the quieter water caused thereby, and are easily captured in nets or by spearing. They are so numerous in places that the Indian can often flap them out of the water, by a sudden dexterous jerk of his paddle, to his squaw on the beach, who then immediately knocks them on the head and guts them.At the curing houses, mostly owned by Americans, the labour is chiefly performed by Chinamen under the superintendence of white men.“John”quickly and cleverly guts the fish and cuts off its head; then cuts it into chunks, which are boiled, first in salt and afterwards in fresh water. Next the tins are filled, and soldered down, all but one little hole in their tops. The tins are then immersed in boiling water, and when every particle of air is excluded, a few drops of solder effectually seal them up till wanted for the table. The process is in effect the same employed in the preservation of meats and fruits in tins.Many British and Irish waterfalls are celebrated for their salmon leaps. In Inverness-shire at Kilmorack, at Ballyshannon in Donegal, and Leixlip near Dublin, in Pembrokeshire and elsewhere, the leaps are noted, and at many of them there are osier baskets placed below to catch the fish when they fail and fall. Sportsmen have even shot them, on the wing as it were, in their leap. At the Falls of Kilmorack“Lord Lovat conceived the idea of placing a furnace and frying-pan on a point of rock overhanging the river. After their unsuccessful effort some of the unfortunate salmon would fall accidentally into the frying-pan. The noble lord could thus boast that the resources of his country were so abundant, that on placing a furnace and frying-pan on the banks of its rivers, the salmon would leap into it of their own accord, without troubling the sportsman to catch them. It is more probable, however, that Lord Lovat knew that the way to enjoy salmon in perfection is to cook it when fresh from the water, and before the richer parts of the fish have ceased to curd.”In our own land, the Tweed, Tay, Spey, and Severn, are all noted rivers for salmon; the Tay fish sometimes weigh sixty pounds. It is a curious fact that the full-grown salmon never feeds in the rivers.“Juvenile experience on the part of the fish, recurring as a phantasm, causes them to snap at a shining artificial minnow or a gaudy fly, but they never rise out of the water; the bait must dip to them, and when hooked they shake[pg 168]the intruder as a terrier does a rat.”Their superabundant store of fat enables them to live on themselves, as it were, as do the Asiatic and African doomba sheep when avalanches and heavy snow-falls stop their supplies of herbage.45They become much thinner during their stay in fresh water; their colour becomes duller, and their flavour much depreciated. Izaak Walton’s statement that“the further they get from the sea they be both fatter and better”is utterly erroneous, for they fatten only in the sea. In March, 1845, the Duke of Athole took a ten-pound salmon in the Tay after it had spawned, and attached a medal to it and then let it go to sea. The same individual, with its decoration, was fished up five weeks and a few days afterwards, when it had been to the refreshing salt water. It had more than doubled its weight, for it weighed twenty-one pounds.THE SALMON (Salmo salar).THE SALMON (Salmo salar).

CHAPTER XIII.The Ocean and its Living Wonders(continued).The Crustaceans, a Crusty Set—Young Crabs and their Peculiarities—Shells and no Shells—Powers of Renewal—The Biter Bit—Cocoa-nut eating Crabs—Do Crabs like Boiling?—The Land Crab and his Migrations—Nigger Excitement—The King Crab—The Hut Crab—A True Yarn—The Hermit or Soldier Crab—Pugnaciousness—Crab War and Human War—Prolific Crustaceans—Raising Lobster-pots—Technical Differences—How do Lobsters shed their Shells?—Fishermen’s Ideas—Habits of the Lobster—Its Fecundity—The Supply for Billingsgate—The Season-“Lobster Frolics”in British North America—Eel-grass—Cray-fish, Prawns, and Shrimps.In the Crustacea we find the lowest form of articulate animals. They possess feet, breathe through gills, and derive their name from their hard crusty covering, which is mainly carbonate of lime with colouring matter. They have nearly all of them claws, which most of them know well how to employ offensively.“They have been compared,”says[pg 151]Figuier,“to the heavily-armed knights of the middle ages—at once audacious and cruel; barbed in steel from head to foot, with visor and corselet, arm-pieces and thigh-pieces—scarcely anything, in fact, is wanting to complete the resemblance.”They possess the power of throwing off their calcareous covering, when they become, for the nonce, as vulnerable as they had been before formidable.41“Among all the curious and quaint forms of animal life to be found in the sea,”says Lord,“few for grotesque oddity can equal the baby crabs, orZoëa, as they are sometimes called. These interesting infants are not the least like their papa or mamma, and no respectable or fully-matured male or femalecrabwould ever own them as his or her offspring. An elfish little creature is the juvenile crab, with a head scarcely deserving the name, and a pair of goggle bull’s-eyes as of two policemen’s lanterns rolled into one, a tail vastly too long for him, and an anti-garotte spear, quite as long as his absurd little body, attached to the spot where his coat-collar should be.... Master Crab’s internal economy is just as curious as his external skeleton. One pair of jaws one would be disposed to think sufficient for any living creature of reasonable requirements, but he possesses eight, and instead of exposing his teeth to the examination of the critical in matters of dentition, he carries them safely stowed away in the interior of his stomach, where they would be excessively hard to get at in cases of crustacean toothache. With such appliances as these the food cannot well be otherwise than perfectly masticated. A crab’s liver is an odd organ to contemplate, and constitutes a considerable portion of the soft interior of the shell-like box in which the heart and other viscera are lodged. That well-known delicacy known as the‘cream’or‘fat’of the crab is liver, and nothing else. The lungs, or gills, are formed by those fringe-like appendages popularly known as the‘dead men’s fingers.’The shell-shifting process before referred to is common to all crustaceans; and our friend the crab, when he feels his corselet getting rather tight for him, manages by some extraordinary process not only to extricate himself from it, together with his shell-gauntlets, and the powerful nippers with which he is provided, but performs other feats, compared with which those of the Davenport Brothers sink into utter insignificance.”Nearly all the crustaceans are hardy and destructive, and fight not merely their enemies, but among each other. It matters little to them whether they lose a claw or a tail, for after a few weeks of repose those members grow again. Tandon records the fact that lobsters“which in an unfortunate encounter lost a limb, sick and debilitated, reappear at the end of a few months with a perfect limb, vigorous, and ready for service.”On the Spanish coast a certain crab is caught for its claw alone, which is considered excellent eating; this is pulled off, and the mutilated animal thrown back into the sea, likely enough to be retaken, and the same process repeated at some future time. Crustaceans are nearly all carnivorous, and are by no means particular what they eat. Some of them, however, show considerable appreciation for the oyster. Sometimes they eat each other. Mr. Rymer Jones tells a story of one which attacked and commenced to eat one[pg 152]slightly smaller than himself, and was then himself attacked and eaten by a companion, realising the old adage concerning fleas—“And these have smaller still to bite ’em,And so proceed,ad infinitum.”Some crustaceans, however, adopt a vegetable diet. The Robber Crab of the Polynesian Islands can not merely open a cocoa-nut, but also enjoy its contents. The crab begins by tearing off the fibre at the extremity where the fruit is, always choosing the right hand. When this is removed, it strikes it with its great claws until an opening is made; it then inserts its slender claws, and by wriggling and turning itself about removes the contents of the nut.CRABS (Cancer pagurus).CRABS (Cancer pagurus).The proper mode of boiling crabs has long been a subject on which doctors have disagreed. Who, then, shall decide? That there is cruelty associated with the taking away of life it would be hard to deny, but the correctness of choice between gradual stewing in slowly-heated water and being plunged at once into the seething, bubbling cauldron requires“the revelations of a boiled crab”to clear up; and until a crustacean production under that or a like title appears, we shall continue to plunge our armour-clad victims in water at 212 degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, and leave the question as to the propriety of our so doing to those who are disposed to grapple with the subject for its own sake.The West India Islands possess in the Land Crab (Gecarcinus ruricola) a kind of crustacean highlander, who retreats into the uplands at certain times in the year.“As the spawning season approaches a mighty gathering of the clans takes place, and whole legions, unwarned by fiery cross or blazing beacon, hasten forth to join the living tide flowing onward towards the sea. Through the tangled jungle, down the rock-strewed ravine, over fallen tree-trunks, and among the dense undergrowth of the forest, in ceaseless, creeping, crawling, scuttling thousands, still they come onward, and ever onward, as the bright stars shine out to light them on their way. Banks, hedges, walls, and even houses, are passed straight over in this crustacean steeplechase, no flags being needed to keep the mail-clad competitors to the true course. Instinct the guide, and the blue sea for a goal, nothing stops the race.“Cuffee and his companions, who have been gossiping and story-telling beneath their cocoa-leaf roofs until half asleep, appear to become most violent and incurable lunatics, on suddenly becoming aware of the nocturnal exodus. They leap high in the air, shout, scream, and dance like fiends, whilst the most ready-witted of the crew dash off to‘de massa’with the startling news.‘Hi, golly, sa! de crab! de crab! He come for sure, this time, sure ’nuff. Plenty catch um bime by;’and Cuffee keeps his word to the letter, and captures the pilgrims by the basketful, in spite of their claws. And black-faced, woolly-headed Aunt Lilly, the cook, shows her teeth, like ivory dominoes in an ebony box, as visions of white-snow-like rice, cocoa-nut milk, capsicum-pods, and stewpans, pass in pleasing and appetising review before her; and‘massa’himself takes an extra pull at the cold-sangaree jug, sleeps pleasantly, and dreams of the crab-feast on the morrow.”THE WEST INDIAN LAND CRAB (Gecarcinus ruricola).THE WEST INDIAN LAND CRAB (Gecarcinus ruricola).The King Crab of the eastern seas grows sometimes to an enormous size, while the lance-shaped spear with which he is furnished is used by the Malays as a warlike instrument. Then, for a contrast, there’s the little nut-crab, with his queer little legs tucked up under his[pg 153]body, which rambling jack-tars sometimes gather for their friends at home, under the idea that their shells, when cut and polished, will make handsome brooches and shirt-pins. Major Lord tells a good story of a dry old salt of a quartermaster, on the Indian station, who“chanced one day, when on shore for a cruise, to become possessed of a goodly number of theseluckystones, as he called them, and by way of securing his treasures, placed them in an old silk handkerchief, and stowed them away, with a few dollars and sundry cakes of cavendish, in the corner of his chest. It so happened that some piratical shipmate, not proof against the allurements of honeydew and silver, but totally indifferent to natural history, seized his opportunity and spirited off the tobacco and money, but left the lucky-stones behind. The next day, when our old friend came for his accustomed supply of the weed, he, to his horror, astonishment, and indignation, found the supposed pebbles in active motion, performing foot-races over his best jacket, the handkerchief spread open, and, alas! empty.‘Well!’exclaimed he;‘blow me if this aint too much of the monkey! Why, look ye here, messmates! These here blessed stones have come to life, every man Jack of ’em. They’ve chawed up all my bacca, and spent every mag of my money! and now I’ll[pg 154]heave the beggars to Davy Jones’s locker. Overboard is where I means to pitch ’em.’And so he did, no doubt to the intense gratification of the falsely-accused crabs.”THE HERMIT CRAB (Pagurus Bernhardus).THE HERMIT CRAB (Pagurus Bernhardus).The Hermit, or Soldier, Crab, with the exception of a kind of cuirass, or head-piece, has a soft, yielding skin. Knowing his own weakness, he invariably entrenches himself in some safe place, not unfrequently emptying the shell of some other marine animal. When he outgrows his borrowed habitation he looks out for some larger dwelling. He is a very timid creature, and retires at the least alarm. On the other hand, among his kind he is strong, voracious, and cruel. Two hermit crabs cannot meet without a fight brewing, but it rarely comes off.“Each extends his long pincers, and seems to try to touch the other, much as a spider does, when it seeks to seize a fly on its most vulnerable side; but each finding the other armed in proof and perfectly protected, though eager to fight, usually adopts the better part of valour, and prudently withdraws. They often have true passages of arms, nevertheless, in which claws are spread out and displayed in the most threatening manner, the two adversaries tumbling head over heels, and rolling one upon the other, but they get more frightened than hurt.”Mr. Gosse, however, describes a struggle which had a tragic end. A hermit met a brother hermit pleasantly lodged in a shell much more spacious than his own. He seized it by the head with his powerful claws, tore it from its asylum with the speed of lightning, and took its place not less promptly, leaving the dispossessed unfortunate struggling on the sand in convulsions of agony.“Our battles,”says Bonnet,“have rarely such important objects in view;theyfight each other for a house.”A young poet of to-day42sings ofourwars—“Tell me, tell me, is this glory?Is it honour, is it fame?Has mankind, through ages hoary,Given to war its fitting name?Twist it, turn it, warp it, bind it,Greet its triumphs with acclaim,Yet at last the world will find itOnly murder, all the same!”Both crabs and lobsters are amazingly prolific, and lay an enormous number of eggs: it is computed that each female produces from 12,000 to 20,000 in a season; and yet these shell-fish are always dear in London! In France, Figuier tells us, the size of the marketable lobster is regulated by law, and fixed at a minimum of eight inches in length: all under that length are contraband. The London market is supplied from every part of our coasts, and very largely from Norway. At Kamble, near Southampton, one owner has storing-ponds, or tanks, for 50,000 at a time; and he has his own smacks constantly running to the coasts of France, Scotland, and Ireland.The Lobster (Homarus vulgaris) is found in great abundance all round our coasts. Who that has frequented our seaside watering-places has not either gone out to assist in hauling up the lobster-pots, or, at all events, seen the fishermen returning with their spoils? And whatcanbe finer than a lobster boiled, say not more than half an hour after his capture from the briny? He tastes very unlike the poor creature which has been conveyed by boat[pg 155]or train to London, and knocked about in barrows, carts, markets, and shops, until he wishes they would boil him, and have done with it at once. Lobster-pots are, practically, wicker-basket traps. The hole at the bottom allows free ingress, but makes it difficult for the victim to get out. They are baited with garbage, and the position of each on the rocks or sand below is marked by a buoy. Each fisherman has his own private mark on them; and woe to the lobster-thief, as to the crab-thief! Sometimes nets are used for catching lobsters.Mr. Pennant says that large lobsters are in their best season from the middle of October to the beginning of May. The smaller ones are good all the summer. If they are four-and-a-half inches long from the top of the head to the end of the back shell they are called“sizable”lobsters; if under four inches,“half-size,”and two are reckoned as one of size. Under four inches, they are called“pawks.”There is little doubt that up to a certain age lobsters shed their shells annually, but the mode of performance is not quite understood to-day.“It is supposed that the old shell is cast, and that the animal retires to some lurking-place till the new covering acquires consistence to contend with his armour-clad congeners.... The most probable conjecture is that the shell sloughs off piecemeal, as it does in the cray-fish. The greatest mystery of all, perhaps, is the process by which the lobster withdraws the fleshy part of its claws from their calcareous covering. Fishermen say the lobster pines before casting its shell, and thus gets thin, so as to permit of its withdrawing its members from it.”He sheds tears first, and shell second.The common English lobster, as seen in the fishmonger’s shop, is very unlike his relatives beneath the waves.“The curled-up form,”says Major Lord,“in which he is seen when so exposed is not that usually assumed in his own element, except in the act of exerting its immense powers of retrograde motion. These are so great that one sudden downward sweep of its curiously-constructed oar-like tail is sufficient to send it like an arrow, three or four and twenty feet, with the most extraordinary precision, thereby enabling our friend to retreat with the greatest rapidity into nooks, corners, and crevices among the rocks, where pursuit would be hopeless. His eyes being arranged on foot-stalks, or stems, are free from the inconvenient trammels of sockets, and possess a radius of vision commanding both front and rear, and from their compound form (being made up of a number of square lenses) are extremely penetrating and powerful. The slightest shadow passing over the pool in which the lobster may chance to be crawling or swimming will frequently cause one of these backward shoots to be made, and the lobster vanishes into some cleft or cavity with a rapidity of motion which no harlequin could ever, in his wildest dreams, hope to achieve. Down among the deep channels, between the crags at the sea’s bottom, alarms, except from the sea-robbers themselves, are not to be dreaded. Here the lobsters are at home, and in such spots the wicker trap, or the trunk net, may be laid down for them: nets of this kind are in general use. They are made by fastening a number of stout wooden hoops to longitudinal bars, and covering them with network. Their internal construction is much like that of the crab-pot, only there are two entrances instead of one, and twine is used instead of willows or twigs to prevent the prisoners from escaping. Heavy stones are attached to them as sinkers. Fish offal is used as bait, and corks at the end of lines serve to point out their position and haul them up by.[pg 156]Lobsters are prolific creatures, and it is well that they are so, considering the enormous quantities consumed every day in England alone.“It has been computed that each fully-matured female will produce from 18,000 to 20,000 eggs, and there is little doubt but that with proper management and the expenditure of a very small capital artificial fecundation of the ova might be most successfully and profitably conducted in this country. Much attention has of late been paid to this subject in France, and many most interesting experiments in connection with it have been tried. The number of lobsters brought every season to Billingsgate Market will serve to give some idea of the importance of lobster fishing, and the sums of money which must change hands in connection with it. Calculations show that from the coasts of England, Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands 150,000 lobsters per season reach Billingsgate, exclusive of the supply of Norway lobsters, which are even more abundantly supplied, over 600,000 per season being imported. It not unfrequently happens that one day’s supply for that great emporium of sea dainties reaches as high as 25,000, and here at early morning, long before mighty London is fairly up for the day, a scene of bustle and activity may be witnessed which well repays the early riser. Steam in clouds floats above the vast loads of newly-boiled crustaceans and molluscs; and carts of every size and pattern block the way.”The regular lobster season lasts from the month of March to August. About the middle or latter end of the last-mentioned month the shifting of shells takes place, and the fish is unfit for human food; but, like the silkworms after a change of skin, they commence feeding in the most voracious manner directly the new garment is durable enough to admit of their taking their walks abroad, and their temporary seclusion and compulsory abstinence are amply made up by a course of heavy feeding. The lost plumpness and condition soon return. Unlike some crustaceans who are coldly indifferent to the welfare of their offspring, the mamma lobster keeps her little brood about her until the youthful lobsterkins are big enough to start in life for themselves.The coasts of British North America, as well as many portions of the seaboard of the United States, abound in mail-clad inhabitants of many kinds. In some localities great amusement is at times afforded by their capture—a sort of picnic, or lobster frolic, being organised. A boat, with plenty of eatables and drinkables, and a capacious pot, are provided, and long poles with their ends split prepared. On the boat being propelled slowly through the shallow water, a sharp look-out is kept on the regions below, and on the lobster being discovered, the split end of the pole is lowered quietly, and with the greatest caution, until just over the unsuspecting victim’s back, when by a sudden downward thrust the forceps-like instrument securely nips him, and he is brought to the surface in spite of his claws and the pinches he inflicts on the tough, unyielding wood. Some overhanging rock or pleasant nook on the shore is usually selected as a place in which to dine and cook the proceeds of the lobster hunt.[pg 157]LOBSTER (Homarus vulgaris) AND PRAWNS (Palæmon serratus).LOBSTER (Homarus vulgaris) AND PRAWNS (Palæmon serratus).[pg 158]The bays, shallows, and mouths of rivers on the coast of Prince Edward’s Island abound in a species of seaweed known amongst the inhabitants as“eel-grass,”on which vast numbers of lobsters feed as in a rich sea-garden. To these favoured hunting grounds the lobster-catchers betake themselves, and by wading little more than half-leg deep gather as many as they require. A bushel basket has been filled in this way in less than an hour.Like the branching growths of submarine life which form the connecting link between the vegetable and animal kingdoms, we find crustaceans dwelling, so to speak, on the border-lands of other races, and linking the shrimp, crab, and lobster families together; partaking of the nature of each, but being identical with neither; such are the so-calledSquat Lobsters, orGalathea. Their singular alertness renders capture somewhat difficult. Like the lobster, they possess extraordinary powers of vision and retrograde movement. The horns are extremely long, and so sensitive that the slightest touch seems to reveal at once the nature of an approaching object, and enables the alarmed squat to seek a safe sanctuary between the rock clefts, from which it is by no means easy to withdraw him.Thespined lobster,crawfish,cray, orcrowder, will, from its thorn-coated shell, long horns, powerful nippers, and generally formidable appearance, be familiar to most of our readers. Like most other crustaceans, the cray delights in a home among rugged sunken rocks, and is taken in the traps laid for ordinary lobsters and crabs. Their flesh, being of harder texture and sweeter flavour, is objected to by professed lobster-eaters; still, a well-conditioned spined lobster is by no means to be despised. Some portions of the Pacific Ocean, and the warm seas of the East, contain them in vast numbers. Many spots on the coast of South America, and the bays and inlets of the island of Juan Fernandez, literally swarm with them. Some idea may be formed of the abundance of animated creatures of this and other kinds to be taken in these seas by the following account of the fishing to be obtained in them, given by the Hon. F. Walpole:—“The fishing afforded the best return for labour, and a boat might be filled in four hours with hook and line only. Fish swarmed of every size and colour, and seemingly of every variety of appetite, for they took any bait. The bottom was literally lined with crawfish of a large size; some must have weighed five pounds at least. There needed no hook—a piece of anything let down on a string to the bottom was enough; they saw it, grasped it, and kept their hold till you had seized them by their long feelers and borne them into the boat, where they crawled about and extended their feelers as if in search of more bait.... We had crawfish for breakfast, crawfish for dinner, crawfish for supper, and crawfish for any incidental meal we could cram in between.”The coral reefs fringing the island of Mauritius afford shelter to numbers of the family of crawfish, which in both size and splendour of colouring far excel those taken in our seas.The prawn and shrimp are included in the same order as the lobster and the crab, and species of these crustaceans are found in all seas. They are the scavengers of the ocean, and pick and devour any dead matter in the sea; hence they are particularly valuable in the aquarium. The art of shrimping will no doubt be familiar to all our readers, from visits made to our south-coast watering-places. In tropical climates the prawn attains the size of a small lobster—up to nine or ten inches in length, three being considered sufficient for a meal. Prawns are sold in Dublin six and seven inches in length, and are considered splendid feeding.[pg 159]CHAPTER XIV.Ocean Life.—The Harvest of the Sea.Fishes and their Swimming Apparatus—The Bladder—Scientific Classification—Cartilaginous Fish—The Torpedo—A Living Galvanic Battery—The Shark—His Love for Man in a Gastronomic Sense—Stories of their Prowess—Catching a Shark—Their Interference with Whaling—The Tiger-Shark—African Worship of the Monster—The Dog-fish—The Sturgeon—Enormous Fecundity—Caviare—The Bony Fishes—The Flying Fish: its Feats; its Enemies—Youth of a Salmon—The Parr, the Smolt, and the Grilse—Flourishes in the Sea—The Ponds at Stormontfield—The Salmon’s Enemies—The Ettrick Shepherd—Canned Salmon, and where it comes from—The Fish a Drug in N. W. America—Canoes impeded by them—The Fisheries of the Columbia River—The Fishing Season—Modes of Catching Salmon—The Factories and Processes employed.And now we proceed to still higher organisations. The fish must have their turn in a work treating of their natural home, the ocean.43Fishes, intended always to live in water, have wonderful organs to aid them in swimming.“The anterior limbs,”says Figuier,“which correspond with the arms in man and the wings in birds, are attached to each side of the trunk, immediately behind the head, and form the pectoral fins. The posterior limbs occupy the lower surface of the body, and form the ventral fins. The latter, which are always over the ventral line, may be placed before, beneath, or, as is most usual, behind the former. Fishes possess, besides these two pair of fins, odd fins. The fins which are found on the back or dorsum are called the back or dorsal fins, those at the end of the tail are the caudal fins; finally, there is frequently another attached to the lower extremity of the body, which is called the anal fin. These fins are always nearly of the same structure, consisting generally of a fold of the skin, supported by slender, flexible, cartilaginous, or osseous rays, connected by a thin membrane.”The muscles which move these fins are powerful. Further, nearly all species of fish possess a swimming bladder, over which the animal has control, and can thereby increase or diminish the specific gravity of its body. Immediately behind the head are the gill openings; respiration is effected by water, in its natural state always charged with air, being taken in at the mouth, which passes over the gills, and is afterwards ejected. The eyes in fish are usually very large.The scientific classification of fishes usually adopted is that of Muller. He divided them into five groups, theLeptocardia,Cyclostomata,Selachia,Ganoidea, andTeleostea. The first of these is represented by a single genus,Amphioxus, a little slender gelatinous fish, rarely over two inches in length, and commonly found on all sandy coasts. The second order is characterised as serpentine, void of fins, and with a mouth formed for suction. The lamprey is a familiar example.The third order,Selachia, includes a number of cartilaginous fish, varying much in form; the rays, dog-fish, skate, torpedo, shark, and saw-fish belong to this important division. The torpedo has the power of giving a strong electrical shock. Redi, an Italian naturalist of the seventeenth century, first studied them carefully. He caught and landed an electric ray, and pressing it with his hand, experienced a tingling sensation, which extended to his arms and shoulders, and was followed by a disagreeable trembling. This electric power dies with the animal. Dr. Walsh made some interesting experiments with them. He placed[pg 160]a living torpedo on a clean wet towel, and connected brass wires with it. Round the torpedo were eight persons, standing on isolating substances. One end of the wire was placed in a basin full of water. The first person had a finger of one hand in this basin, and a finger of the other in a second basin, also full of water. The second person had a finger in the last-named basin, and a finger of the other hand in a third basin, and so on round the circle of eight persons. The end of the second wire was plunged into the last basin of the series, thus establishing a complete electric circuit. At the moment when the experimenter touched the torpedo a tolerably strong shock was felt by all participating. When the torpedo was placed on an isolated supporter, it showed its energy by communicating to several persons forty or fifty shocks in the short space of a minute and a half.The familyCarcharidæincludes the true sharks, some species of which attain to a length of twenty, or even thirty, feet. They are the terror of all other fish and molluscs.“But the prey which has the greatest charm for him is man; the shark loves him dearly, but it is with the affection of the gourmand. If we may believe some travellers, when several varieties of human food comes in its way, the shark prefers the European to the Asiatic, and both to the negro.”He has been known to jump clean aboard a fisherman’s boat, and even to snap up a sailor from the shrouds. Commerson relates the following:—The corpse of a negro had been suspended from a yard-armtwenty feetabove the level of the sea. A shark was seen making every effort to reach the body, which eventually he did, and tore it limb from limb in presence of the horror-stricken crew. The mouth of the shark is placed in the lower part of the head, and the animal has to turn itself in the water before he can seize an object above him. On the African coast the negroes take advantage of this fact; they swim towards him, and seize the moment when he turns to rip up his belly with a large strong knife. The adult shark has six rows of murderous-looking teeth, forming a perfect arsenal of deadly weapons.Captain Basil Hall describes the mode by which sharks are sometimes captured.“The sharp-curved dorsal fin of a huge shark was seen rising about six inches above the water, and cutting the glazed surface of the sea by as fine a line as if a sickle had been drawn along it.‘Messenger, run to the cook for a piece of pork,’cried the captain, taking the command with as much glee as if an enemy’s cruiser had been in sight.‘Where’s your hook, quartermaster?’‘Here, sir, here,’cried the fellow, feeling the point, and declaring it was as sharp as any lady’s needle, and in the next instant piercing with it a huge junk of pork weighing four or five pounds. The hook, which is as large as one’s little finger, has a curvature about as large as a man’s hand when half closed, and is six or eight inches in length, while a formidable line, furnished with three or four feet of chain attached to the end of the mizen topsail halyard, is now cast into the ship’s wake.“Sometimes the very instant the bait is cast over the stern the shark flies at it with such eagerness that he actually springs partially out of the water. This, however, is rare. On these occasions he gorges the bait, the hook, and a foot or two of the chain, without any mastication, and darts off with the treacherous prize with such prodigious velocity that it makes the rope crack again as soon as the coil is drawn out. Much dexterity is required in the hand which holds the line at this moment. A bungler is apt[pg 161]to be too precipitate, and jerk away the hook before it has got far enough into the shark’s stomach. The secret of the sport is to let the monster gulp down the whole bait, and then to give the line a violent pull, by which the barbed point buries itself in the coat of the stomach. When the hook is first fixed it spins out like the log-line of a ship going twelve knots.“The suddenness of the jerk with which the shark is brought up often turns him quite over. No sailor, however, thinks of hauling one on board merely by the rope fastened to the hook. To prevent the line breaking, the hook snapping, or the jaw being torn away, a running bowline is adopted. This noose is slipped down the rope and passed over the monster’s head, and is made to join at the point of junction of the tail with the body; and now the first part of the fun is held to be completed. The vanquished enemy is easily drawn up over the taffrail, and flung on deck, to the delight of the crew.”Even then he is sometimes a very formidable enemy. The flesh of the shark, though sometimes eaten, is coarse and leathery.THE COMMON SHARK (Carcharias vulgaris).THE COMMON SHARK (Carcharias vulgaris).On several of the smaller islands of the Spanish Main whaling stations are established. After the huge fish have been captured, they are towed by the boats to one of these stations, and the blubber is stripped off and carried on shore to the boiling-house in large white blocks, where a simple apparatus is set up for“trying-out”the oil. It sometimes happens that immediately after the whale has been killed the sharks surround it in such numbers, and devour the blubber with such rapacity, that if the distance be great and the currents adverse, the greater part has been eaten off before the whale can be towed ashore; and the labour of the fishermen is thus thrown away.The tiger-shark is a more formidable monster than others of its tribe, because of its power of seizing its prey without turning on its back or side. It is enabled to do this from the great size of its mouth, and from its position, which is near the end of the snout, instead of underneath, as in other varieties of the shark.“As soon as the carcase of the whale has been stripped of its blubber, it is towed out at high water to a sufficient distance from the station to ensure of its being carried away by the falling tide. This is necessary, for the stench from so large a mass of putrefying flesh, exposed as it has been to the intense action of a tropical sun for three or four days, is more than unpleasant.“Now is the opportunity for the shark-hunters. They take possession of the remains, tow them to some convenient nook of the Bocas, as the channels between the islands are called, and there anchor them. All is now prepared, and nothing remains but eagerly and silently to watch for the assembly of the ravenous brutes to their midnight orgies.”The liver of the shark yields a most valuable oil, largely used in the colony as a[pg 162]substitute for cod-liver oil. The liver of a shark fifteen feet long will yield from twelve to sixteen gallons of oil.The canoes used for shark-hunting are some twenty feet in length. In the bow a deep groove is cut, to guide the rope after the fish has been struck. A coil of fifteen fathoms of rope, carefully arranged under the thwarts, is secured at one end to a piece of strong chain, at the other end of which is a harpoon. A lance is kept on board to assist in giving thecoup de grâceto the shark when he has exhausted himself sufficiently.The inhabitants of many parts of the African coasts worship the shark, and consider its stomach the road to heaven. Three or four times a year they row out and offer the shark poultry and goats to satisfy his appetite. This is not all; a child is once a year sacrificed to the monster, which has been specially fattened for this occasion from its birth to the age of ten. On thefêteday, the unfortunate little victim is bound to a post on a sandy point at low water; as the tide rises the sharks arrive. The child may shriek, and the mother may weep, but it is of no avail; even its own parent thinks that the horrible sacrifice will ensure her child’s entry into heaven.THE DOG-FISH (Acanthias vulgaris).THE DOG-FISH (Acanthias vulgaris).The dog-fish—from which we derive the skin known asshagreen, used for spectacle and other cases—the furious and voracious hammerhead, and the saw-fish, belong to the same great order. The last named will attack any inhabitant of the deep whatever, and even dares to measure his strength with the whale. Its length is from twelve to fifteen feet, while its weapon of defence is sometimes as much as two yards in length. Occasionally it dashes itself against the side of a ship with such fury as to leave its sword broken in the timber.Of the fourth great order,Ganoidea, the sturgeon is the most prominent example. It is essentially a sea-fish, although ascending rivers at stated periods, as does the salmon. It is particularly noticeable for the number of bony plates or scales on its back and belly. In the sea the sturgeon feeds on herrings, mackerel, and other fish; in the rivers on salmon. It is caught in traps, or in nets. The prepared roe, cleaned, washed in vinegar, and partially dried, is the caviare of the Russians. The eggs of a female sturgeon will weigh over one-third of its entire body, and as they sometimes reach a weight of nearly 3,000 pounds, the preparation of caviare becomes an important and profitable industry.THE GLOBE-FISH (Tetrodon) AND SUN-FISH (Orthagoriscus mola).THE GLOBE-FISH (Tetrodon) AND SUN-FISH (Orthagoriscus mola).THE PIPE FISH (Syngnathus acus).THE PIPE FISH (Syngnathus acus).The fifth order,Teleostea, or bony fishes, constitutes a lengthy series. Among it must be placed the globular and phosphorescent sun-fish, the spiny globe-fish, the bony trunk-fish, and the cuirassed pipe-fish, the sea-horse, which has a head not unlike a horse, and floats vertically, the flying-fish, the eels, herrings, salmon, carp, cod, flat-fish, mullets, tunnies, and others too numerous to mention. It is for man’s purposes the most important of all the orders.THE FLYING-FISH (Exocœtus exiliens.)THE FLYING-FISH (Exocœtus exiliens.)The flying-fish have been incidentally mentioned before in this work. Captain Basil Hall observed a flight of 200 yards; they have come on board a vessel fourteen or fifteen feet, and into the chains of a line-of-battle ship twenty feet above the water. They are considerably harassed by the attacks of other fish, and when they take to the air often fall victims to gulls and other sea-birds. Sharks and dolphins are their particular enemies. Their glittering, silvery brilliancy is most beautiful in the brightness of tropical seas.[pg 163]Among the most important bony fishes must certainly be first placed the salmon, which includes three well-known species,Salmo salar(the salmon itself),S. fario(the salmon trout), andS. trutta(the trout). The early life of the salmon is interesting. The infant fry is primarily, of course, very helpless, and during the first two or three weeks of its existence carries about with it, as a provision for food, a portion of the yolk of the egg from which it was hatched. This generally lasts it from twenty to forty days. It is two years before the youngster ventures out to sea. In the first stage the young salmon is called aparr; during the second it is asmolt,i.e., a parr plus a covering of silvery scales. The smolt, which in the course of its two or more years’ stay in the river has only attained a growth of six or eight inches, returns from the sea in a couple of months weighing three or four pounds, and after six months ten or twelve pounds. It is now agrilse.Dr. Bertram says of the salmon’s growth:—“The sea-feeding must be favourable, and the condition of the fish well suited to the salt-water to ensure such rapid growth—a rapidity which every visit of the fish to the ocean serves but to confirm. Various fish, whilst in the grilse state, have been marked to prove this; and at every migration they returned to their breeding-stream with added weight and improved health. What the salmon feeds upon whilst in the salt-water is not well known, as the digestion of the fish is so rapid as to prevent the discovery of food in their stomachs when they are captured and opened. Guesses have been made, and it is likely that these approximate to the truth; but the old story of the rapid voyage of the salmon to the North Pole and back again turns out, like the theory upon which was built up the herring migration romance, to be a mere myth.“None of our naturalists have yet attempted to elucidate that mystery of salmon life which converts one-half of the fish into sea-going smolts, whilst as yet the other moiety remain as parr. It has been investigated so far at the breeding-ponds at Stormontfield, but without resolving the question. There is another point of doubt as to salmon life which I shall also have a word to say about—namely, whether or not that fish makes two visits annually to the sea; likewise, whether it be probable that a smolt remains in the salt water for nearly a year before it becomes a grilse. A salmon only stays, as it is popularly supposed, a very short time in the salt water; and as it is one of the quickest-swimming fishes we have, it is able to reach a distant river in a very short space of time, therefore it is most desirable we should know what it does with itself when it is not migrating from one water to the other; because, according to the opinion of some naturalists, it would speedily become so deteriorated in the river as to be unequal to the slightest exertion....“At every stage of its career the salmon is surrounded by enemies. At the very moment of spawning, the female is watched by a horde of devourers, who instinctively flock to the breeding-grounds in order to feast on the ova. The hungry pike, the lethargic perch, the greedy trout, the very salmon itself, are lying in wait, all agape for the palatable roe, and greedily swallowing whatever quantity the current carries down. Then the waterfowl eagerly pounces on the precious deposit the moment it has been forsaken by the fish; and if it escape being gobbled up by such cormorants, the spawn[pg 164]may be washed away by a flood, or the position of the bed may be altered, and the ova be destroyed, perhaps for want of water. As an instance of the loss incidental to salmon-spawning in the natural way, I may just mention that a whiting of about three-quarters of a pound weight has been taken in the Tay with three hundred impregnated salmon ova in its stomach! If this fish had been allowed to dine and breakfast at this rate during the whole of the spawning season it would have been difficult to estimate the loss our fisheries would have sustained by his voracity. No sooner do the eggs ripen, and the young fish come to life, than they are exposed, in their defenceless state, to be preyed upon by all the enemies already enumerated; while, as parr, they have been taken out of our streams in such quantities as to be available for the purpose of pig-feeding and manure! Some economists estimate that only one egg out of every thousand becomes a full-sized salmon. Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart calculated that 150,000,000 of salmon ova are annually deposited in the river Tay; of which only 50,000,000, or one-third, come to life and attain the parr stage; that 20,000,000 of these parr become in time smolts, and that their number is ultimately diminished to 100,000; of which 70,000 are caught, the other 30,000 being left for breeding purposes. Sir Humphry Davy calculated that if a salmon produced 17,000 roe, only 800 of these would arrive at maturity. It is well, therefore, that the female fish yields 1,000 eggs for each pound of her weight; for a lesser degree of fecundity, keeping in view the enormous waste of life indicated by these figures, would long since—especially taking into account the destructive modes of fishing that used a few years ago to be in use—have resulted in the extinction of this valuable fish.“The first person who‘took a thought about the matter’—i.e., as to whether the[pg 165]parr was or was not the young of the salmon—and arrived at a solid conclusion, was James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who, in his usual impulsive way, proceeded to verify his opinions. He had, while herding sheep, many opportunities of watching the fishing streams, and, like most of his class, he wielded his fishing-rod with considerable skill. While angling in the tributaries of some of the Border salmon-streams, he had often caught the parr as it was changing into the smolt, and had, after close observation, come to the conclusion that the little parr was none other than the infant salmon. Mr. Hogg did not keep his discovery a secret, and the more his facts were controverted by the naturalists of the day the louder became his proclamations. He had suspected all his life that parr were salmon in their first stage. He would catch a parr with a few straggling scales upon it; he would look at this fish, and think it queer; instantly he would catch another, a little better covered with silver scales, but all loose, and not adhering to the body. Again, he would catch a smolt, manifestly a smolt, all covered with the white silver scales, yet still rather loose upon the skin, which would come off in his hand. Removing these scales, he found the parr with the blue finger-marks below them, and that the fish were young salmon then became as manifest to the shepherd as that a lamb, if suffered to live, would become a sheep. Wondering at this, he marked a great number of the lesser fish, and offered rewards (characteristically enough, of whisky) to the peasantry to bring him such as had evidently undergone the change predicted by him. When this conclusion was settled in his mind, the Shepherd at once proclaimed his new-gained knowledge.‘What will the fishermen of Scotland think’said he,‘when I assure them, on the faith of long experience and observation, and on the word of one who can have no interest in instilling an untruth into their minds, that every insignificant parr with which the cockney fisher fills his basket is a salmon lost!’These crude attempts of the impulsive Shepherd of Ettrick—and he was hotly opposed by the late Mr. Buist, of Stormontfield—were not without their fruits; indeed, they were so successful as quite to convince him that parr were young salmon in their firststage.”[pg 166]The following amusing dialogue on the habits of the salmon once took place between the Ettrick Shepherd and a friend:—“Shepherd:—‘I maintain that ilka saumon comes aye back again frae the sea till spawn in its ain water.’“Friend:—‘Toots, toots, Jamie! hoo can it manage till do that? Hoo, in the name o’ wonder, can a fish, travelling up a turbid water frae the sea, know when it reaches the entrance to its birthplace, or that it has arrived at the tributary that was its cradle?’“Shepherd:—‘Man, the great wonder to me is no hoo the fish get back, but hoo they find their way till the sea first ava, seein’ that they’ve never been there afore!’”The canned salmon, now generally popular in England, and which, though some few years ago an expensive luxury, is now within the reach of all, comes principally from the Columbia River, Oregon, and other parts of the North Pacific coasts. In North-Western America the fish is a perfect drug in the market. In a city like San Francisco it sells for eight cents (4d.) per pound. Higher up the coast a large fish is obtained for a quarter to half a dollar. Further north a piece of tobacco or a few needles will purchase a twenty or thirty pound salmon. They are so abundant that the writer has seen them on the beaches of streams and creeks falling into Frazer River, British Columbia, by the score, bleeding, gasping, and dying, having literally crowded each other out of the water.“Schools”of them are often so densely packed together, that they impede the progress of canoes and boats.The salmon fisheries of the Columbia, Oregon, itself one of the grandest rivers in the world, give employment to 4,000 men during the season, and nearly all the canned salmon consumed in Europe comes from it.44There are dozens of rivers on the north-west coast equally available, and the business even now is in its infancy; while salted, pickled, or smoked salmon, hardly ever reaches England from there at all. As will appear, there are splendid opportunities on that coast for hundreds of new-comers, it may almost be said with or without capital. It is needless to state that the former is always to be preferred. Where isn’t it?Some ten or a dozen varieties of salmon and salmon-trout, Mr. Murphy tells us, enter the rivers of North-Western America, but only one is selected for commercial purposes. Two of the most delicate-eating varieties—the silvery-white and spring salmons—are never packed in tins, because their schools are less abundant and the fish themselves smaller. The hook-nosed and dog salmons are rarely eaten, except by Indians; while the man has not yet been discovered who would tackle the hump-back. The blue-back, or weak-toothed salmon, an inferior fish also, is only exported to the Sandwich Islands, where the natives are said to really prefer its lean and fibrous flesh to the more delicately-flavoured and succulent kinds. The salmon principally caught is distinguished by the Indians as the“Tyhee,”or chief; it is abundant, large, and most excellent eating; it possesses those“all-round”qualifications which particularly fit it for commerce and cooking. It is theSalmo quinnatof the naturalists.The fishery season on the Columbia lasts from the beginning of April to the end of[pg 167]July, and the fisheries extend along the river for a hundred miles or more. Some of the curing establishments employ their own men to tend the nets, while others purchase from fishermen, the price for fish weighing from fifteen to forty pounds ranging from 25 cents to 50 cents (approximately one to two shillings). These prices would seem ridiculously low were it not for the abundance of the fish and the ease with which they are taken. A party of four men may secure from 300 to 2,000 salmon in twenty-four hours! Take the lowest estimate—300 at 25 cents. This gives 75 dollars (or £15) to divide among the four fishermen. But this would be a very poor catch. A thousand fish are no uncommon haul. This at the lowest price paid would give 250 dollars (£50) to be divided. Of course there is the wear and tear of boat and fishing gear to be considered.Large quantities of the fish are caught in weirs. The Indians, also, knowing that the salmon avoids currents if possible, build out into the river from the shore, for ten or a dozen feet, walls of stone a few inches in height. The salmon crowd into the quieter water caused thereby, and are easily captured in nets or by spearing. They are so numerous in places that the Indian can often flap them out of the water, by a sudden dexterous jerk of his paddle, to his squaw on the beach, who then immediately knocks them on the head and guts them.At the curing houses, mostly owned by Americans, the labour is chiefly performed by Chinamen under the superintendence of white men.“John”quickly and cleverly guts the fish and cuts off its head; then cuts it into chunks, which are boiled, first in salt and afterwards in fresh water. Next the tins are filled, and soldered down, all but one little hole in their tops. The tins are then immersed in boiling water, and when every particle of air is excluded, a few drops of solder effectually seal them up till wanted for the table. The process is in effect the same employed in the preservation of meats and fruits in tins.Many British and Irish waterfalls are celebrated for their salmon leaps. In Inverness-shire at Kilmorack, at Ballyshannon in Donegal, and Leixlip near Dublin, in Pembrokeshire and elsewhere, the leaps are noted, and at many of them there are osier baskets placed below to catch the fish when they fail and fall. Sportsmen have even shot them, on the wing as it were, in their leap. At the Falls of Kilmorack“Lord Lovat conceived the idea of placing a furnace and frying-pan on a point of rock overhanging the river. After their unsuccessful effort some of the unfortunate salmon would fall accidentally into the frying-pan. The noble lord could thus boast that the resources of his country were so abundant, that on placing a furnace and frying-pan on the banks of its rivers, the salmon would leap into it of their own accord, without troubling the sportsman to catch them. It is more probable, however, that Lord Lovat knew that the way to enjoy salmon in perfection is to cook it when fresh from the water, and before the richer parts of the fish have ceased to curd.”In our own land, the Tweed, Tay, Spey, and Severn, are all noted rivers for salmon; the Tay fish sometimes weigh sixty pounds. It is a curious fact that the full-grown salmon never feeds in the rivers.“Juvenile experience on the part of the fish, recurring as a phantasm, causes them to snap at a shining artificial minnow or a gaudy fly, but they never rise out of the water; the bait must dip to them, and when hooked they shake[pg 168]the intruder as a terrier does a rat.”Their superabundant store of fat enables them to live on themselves, as it were, as do the Asiatic and African doomba sheep when avalanches and heavy snow-falls stop their supplies of herbage.45They become much thinner during their stay in fresh water; their colour becomes duller, and their flavour much depreciated. Izaak Walton’s statement that“the further they get from the sea they be both fatter and better”is utterly erroneous, for they fatten only in the sea. In March, 1845, the Duke of Athole took a ten-pound salmon in the Tay after it had spawned, and attached a medal to it and then let it go to sea. The same individual, with its decoration, was fished up five weeks and a few days afterwards, when it had been to the refreshing salt water. It had more than doubled its weight, for it weighed twenty-one pounds.THE SALMON (Salmo salar).THE SALMON (Salmo salar).

CHAPTER XIII.The Ocean and its Living Wonders(continued).The Crustaceans, a Crusty Set—Young Crabs and their Peculiarities—Shells and no Shells—Powers of Renewal—The Biter Bit—Cocoa-nut eating Crabs—Do Crabs like Boiling?—The Land Crab and his Migrations—Nigger Excitement—The King Crab—The Hut Crab—A True Yarn—The Hermit or Soldier Crab—Pugnaciousness—Crab War and Human War—Prolific Crustaceans—Raising Lobster-pots—Technical Differences—How do Lobsters shed their Shells?—Fishermen’s Ideas—Habits of the Lobster—Its Fecundity—The Supply for Billingsgate—The Season-“Lobster Frolics”in British North America—Eel-grass—Cray-fish, Prawns, and Shrimps.In the Crustacea we find the lowest form of articulate animals. They possess feet, breathe through gills, and derive their name from their hard crusty covering, which is mainly carbonate of lime with colouring matter. They have nearly all of them claws, which most of them know well how to employ offensively.“They have been compared,”says[pg 151]Figuier,“to the heavily-armed knights of the middle ages—at once audacious and cruel; barbed in steel from head to foot, with visor and corselet, arm-pieces and thigh-pieces—scarcely anything, in fact, is wanting to complete the resemblance.”They possess the power of throwing off their calcareous covering, when they become, for the nonce, as vulnerable as they had been before formidable.41“Among all the curious and quaint forms of animal life to be found in the sea,”says Lord,“few for grotesque oddity can equal the baby crabs, orZoëa, as they are sometimes called. These interesting infants are not the least like their papa or mamma, and no respectable or fully-matured male or femalecrabwould ever own them as his or her offspring. An elfish little creature is the juvenile crab, with a head scarcely deserving the name, and a pair of goggle bull’s-eyes as of two policemen’s lanterns rolled into one, a tail vastly too long for him, and an anti-garotte spear, quite as long as his absurd little body, attached to the spot where his coat-collar should be.... Master Crab’s internal economy is just as curious as his external skeleton. One pair of jaws one would be disposed to think sufficient for any living creature of reasonable requirements, but he possesses eight, and instead of exposing his teeth to the examination of the critical in matters of dentition, he carries them safely stowed away in the interior of his stomach, where they would be excessively hard to get at in cases of crustacean toothache. With such appliances as these the food cannot well be otherwise than perfectly masticated. A crab’s liver is an odd organ to contemplate, and constitutes a considerable portion of the soft interior of the shell-like box in which the heart and other viscera are lodged. That well-known delicacy known as the‘cream’or‘fat’of the crab is liver, and nothing else. The lungs, or gills, are formed by those fringe-like appendages popularly known as the‘dead men’s fingers.’The shell-shifting process before referred to is common to all crustaceans; and our friend the crab, when he feels his corselet getting rather tight for him, manages by some extraordinary process not only to extricate himself from it, together with his shell-gauntlets, and the powerful nippers with which he is provided, but performs other feats, compared with which those of the Davenport Brothers sink into utter insignificance.”Nearly all the crustaceans are hardy and destructive, and fight not merely their enemies, but among each other. It matters little to them whether they lose a claw or a tail, for after a few weeks of repose those members grow again. Tandon records the fact that lobsters“which in an unfortunate encounter lost a limb, sick and debilitated, reappear at the end of a few months with a perfect limb, vigorous, and ready for service.”On the Spanish coast a certain crab is caught for its claw alone, which is considered excellent eating; this is pulled off, and the mutilated animal thrown back into the sea, likely enough to be retaken, and the same process repeated at some future time. Crustaceans are nearly all carnivorous, and are by no means particular what they eat. Some of them, however, show considerable appreciation for the oyster. Sometimes they eat each other. Mr. Rymer Jones tells a story of one which attacked and commenced to eat one[pg 152]slightly smaller than himself, and was then himself attacked and eaten by a companion, realising the old adage concerning fleas—“And these have smaller still to bite ’em,And so proceed,ad infinitum.”Some crustaceans, however, adopt a vegetable diet. The Robber Crab of the Polynesian Islands can not merely open a cocoa-nut, but also enjoy its contents. The crab begins by tearing off the fibre at the extremity where the fruit is, always choosing the right hand. When this is removed, it strikes it with its great claws until an opening is made; it then inserts its slender claws, and by wriggling and turning itself about removes the contents of the nut.CRABS (Cancer pagurus).CRABS (Cancer pagurus).The proper mode of boiling crabs has long been a subject on which doctors have disagreed. Who, then, shall decide? That there is cruelty associated with the taking away of life it would be hard to deny, but the correctness of choice between gradual stewing in slowly-heated water and being plunged at once into the seething, bubbling cauldron requires“the revelations of a boiled crab”to clear up; and until a crustacean production under that or a like title appears, we shall continue to plunge our armour-clad victims in water at 212 degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, and leave the question as to the propriety of our so doing to those who are disposed to grapple with the subject for its own sake.The West India Islands possess in the Land Crab (Gecarcinus ruricola) a kind of crustacean highlander, who retreats into the uplands at certain times in the year.“As the spawning season approaches a mighty gathering of the clans takes place, and whole legions, unwarned by fiery cross or blazing beacon, hasten forth to join the living tide flowing onward towards the sea. Through the tangled jungle, down the rock-strewed ravine, over fallen tree-trunks, and among the dense undergrowth of the forest, in ceaseless, creeping, crawling, scuttling thousands, still they come onward, and ever onward, as the bright stars shine out to light them on their way. Banks, hedges, walls, and even houses, are passed straight over in this crustacean steeplechase, no flags being needed to keep the mail-clad competitors to the true course. Instinct the guide, and the blue sea for a goal, nothing stops the race.“Cuffee and his companions, who have been gossiping and story-telling beneath their cocoa-leaf roofs until half asleep, appear to become most violent and incurable lunatics, on suddenly becoming aware of the nocturnal exodus. They leap high in the air, shout, scream, and dance like fiends, whilst the most ready-witted of the crew dash off to‘de massa’with the startling news.‘Hi, golly, sa! de crab! de crab! He come for sure, this time, sure ’nuff. Plenty catch um bime by;’and Cuffee keeps his word to the letter, and captures the pilgrims by the basketful, in spite of their claws. And black-faced, woolly-headed Aunt Lilly, the cook, shows her teeth, like ivory dominoes in an ebony box, as visions of white-snow-like rice, cocoa-nut milk, capsicum-pods, and stewpans, pass in pleasing and appetising review before her; and‘massa’himself takes an extra pull at the cold-sangaree jug, sleeps pleasantly, and dreams of the crab-feast on the morrow.”THE WEST INDIAN LAND CRAB (Gecarcinus ruricola).THE WEST INDIAN LAND CRAB (Gecarcinus ruricola).The King Crab of the eastern seas grows sometimes to an enormous size, while the lance-shaped spear with which he is furnished is used by the Malays as a warlike instrument. Then, for a contrast, there’s the little nut-crab, with his queer little legs tucked up under his[pg 153]body, which rambling jack-tars sometimes gather for their friends at home, under the idea that their shells, when cut and polished, will make handsome brooches and shirt-pins. Major Lord tells a good story of a dry old salt of a quartermaster, on the Indian station, who“chanced one day, when on shore for a cruise, to become possessed of a goodly number of theseluckystones, as he called them, and by way of securing his treasures, placed them in an old silk handkerchief, and stowed them away, with a few dollars and sundry cakes of cavendish, in the corner of his chest. It so happened that some piratical shipmate, not proof against the allurements of honeydew and silver, but totally indifferent to natural history, seized his opportunity and spirited off the tobacco and money, but left the lucky-stones behind. The next day, when our old friend came for his accustomed supply of the weed, he, to his horror, astonishment, and indignation, found the supposed pebbles in active motion, performing foot-races over his best jacket, the handkerchief spread open, and, alas! empty.‘Well!’exclaimed he;‘blow me if this aint too much of the monkey! Why, look ye here, messmates! These here blessed stones have come to life, every man Jack of ’em. They’ve chawed up all my bacca, and spent every mag of my money! and now I’ll[pg 154]heave the beggars to Davy Jones’s locker. Overboard is where I means to pitch ’em.’And so he did, no doubt to the intense gratification of the falsely-accused crabs.”THE HERMIT CRAB (Pagurus Bernhardus).THE HERMIT CRAB (Pagurus Bernhardus).The Hermit, or Soldier, Crab, with the exception of a kind of cuirass, or head-piece, has a soft, yielding skin. Knowing his own weakness, he invariably entrenches himself in some safe place, not unfrequently emptying the shell of some other marine animal. When he outgrows his borrowed habitation he looks out for some larger dwelling. He is a very timid creature, and retires at the least alarm. On the other hand, among his kind he is strong, voracious, and cruel. Two hermit crabs cannot meet without a fight brewing, but it rarely comes off.“Each extends his long pincers, and seems to try to touch the other, much as a spider does, when it seeks to seize a fly on its most vulnerable side; but each finding the other armed in proof and perfectly protected, though eager to fight, usually adopts the better part of valour, and prudently withdraws. They often have true passages of arms, nevertheless, in which claws are spread out and displayed in the most threatening manner, the two adversaries tumbling head over heels, and rolling one upon the other, but they get more frightened than hurt.”Mr. Gosse, however, describes a struggle which had a tragic end. A hermit met a brother hermit pleasantly lodged in a shell much more spacious than his own. He seized it by the head with his powerful claws, tore it from its asylum with the speed of lightning, and took its place not less promptly, leaving the dispossessed unfortunate struggling on the sand in convulsions of agony.“Our battles,”says Bonnet,“have rarely such important objects in view;theyfight each other for a house.”A young poet of to-day42sings ofourwars—“Tell me, tell me, is this glory?Is it honour, is it fame?Has mankind, through ages hoary,Given to war its fitting name?Twist it, turn it, warp it, bind it,Greet its triumphs with acclaim,Yet at last the world will find itOnly murder, all the same!”Both crabs and lobsters are amazingly prolific, and lay an enormous number of eggs: it is computed that each female produces from 12,000 to 20,000 in a season; and yet these shell-fish are always dear in London! In France, Figuier tells us, the size of the marketable lobster is regulated by law, and fixed at a minimum of eight inches in length: all under that length are contraband. The London market is supplied from every part of our coasts, and very largely from Norway. At Kamble, near Southampton, one owner has storing-ponds, or tanks, for 50,000 at a time; and he has his own smacks constantly running to the coasts of France, Scotland, and Ireland.The Lobster (Homarus vulgaris) is found in great abundance all round our coasts. Who that has frequented our seaside watering-places has not either gone out to assist in hauling up the lobster-pots, or, at all events, seen the fishermen returning with their spoils? And whatcanbe finer than a lobster boiled, say not more than half an hour after his capture from the briny? He tastes very unlike the poor creature which has been conveyed by boat[pg 155]or train to London, and knocked about in barrows, carts, markets, and shops, until he wishes they would boil him, and have done with it at once. Lobster-pots are, practically, wicker-basket traps. The hole at the bottom allows free ingress, but makes it difficult for the victim to get out. They are baited with garbage, and the position of each on the rocks or sand below is marked by a buoy. Each fisherman has his own private mark on them; and woe to the lobster-thief, as to the crab-thief! Sometimes nets are used for catching lobsters.Mr. Pennant says that large lobsters are in their best season from the middle of October to the beginning of May. The smaller ones are good all the summer. If they are four-and-a-half inches long from the top of the head to the end of the back shell they are called“sizable”lobsters; if under four inches,“half-size,”and two are reckoned as one of size. Under four inches, they are called“pawks.”There is little doubt that up to a certain age lobsters shed their shells annually, but the mode of performance is not quite understood to-day.“It is supposed that the old shell is cast, and that the animal retires to some lurking-place till the new covering acquires consistence to contend with his armour-clad congeners.... The most probable conjecture is that the shell sloughs off piecemeal, as it does in the cray-fish. The greatest mystery of all, perhaps, is the process by which the lobster withdraws the fleshy part of its claws from their calcareous covering. Fishermen say the lobster pines before casting its shell, and thus gets thin, so as to permit of its withdrawing its members from it.”He sheds tears first, and shell second.The common English lobster, as seen in the fishmonger’s shop, is very unlike his relatives beneath the waves.“The curled-up form,”says Major Lord,“in which he is seen when so exposed is not that usually assumed in his own element, except in the act of exerting its immense powers of retrograde motion. These are so great that one sudden downward sweep of its curiously-constructed oar-like tail is sufficient to send it like an arrow, three or four and twenty feet, with the most extraordinary precision, thereby enabling our friend to retreat with the greatest rapidity into nooks, corners, and crevices among the rocks, where pursuit would be hopeless. His eyes being arranged on foot-stalks, or stems, are free from the inconvenient trammels of sockets, and possess a radius of vision commanding both front and rear, and from their compound form (being made up of a number of square lenses) are extremely penetrating and powerful. The slightest shadow passing over the pool in which the lobster may chance to be crawling or swimming will frequently cause one of these backward shoots to be made, and the lobster vanishes into some cleft or cavity with a rapidity of motion which no harlequin could ever, in his wildest dreams, hope to achieve. Down among the deep channels, between the crags at the sea’s bottom, alarms, except from the sea-robbers themselves, are not to be dreaded. Here the lobsters are at home, and in such spots the wicker trap, or the trunk net, may be laid down for them: nets of this kind are in general use. They are made by fastening a number of stout wooden hoops to longitudinal bars, and covering them with network. Their internal construction is much like that of the crab-pot, only there are two entrances instead of one, and twine is used instead of willows or twigs to prevent the prisoners from escaping. Heavy stones are attached to them as sinkers. Fish offal is used as bait, and corks at the end of lines serve to point out their position and haul them up by.[pg 156]Lobsters are prolific creatures, and it is well that they are so, considering the enormous quantities consumed every day in England alone.“It has been computed that each fully-matured female will produce from 18,000 to 20,000 eggs, and there is little doubt but that with proper management and the expenditure of a very small capital artificial fecundation of the ova might be most successfully and profitably conducted in this country. Much attention has of late been paid to this subject in France, and many most interesting experiments in connection with it have been tried. The number of lobsters brought every season to Billingsgate Market will serve to give some idea of the importance of lobster fishing, and the sums of money which must change hands in connection with it. Calculations show that from the coasts of England, Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands 150,000 lobsters per season reach Billingsgate, exclusive of the supply of Norway lobsters, which are even more abundantly supplied, over 600,000 per season being imported. It not unfrequently happens that one day’s supply for that great emporium of sea dainties reaches as high as 25,000, and here at early morning, long before mighty London is fairly up for the day, a scene of bustle and activity may be witnessed which well repays the early riser. Steam in clouds floats above the vast loads of newly-boiled crustaceans and molluscs; and carts of every size and pattern block the way.”The regular lobster season lasts from the month of March to August. About the middle or latter end of the last-mentioned month the shifting of shells takes place, and the fish is unfit for human food; but, like the silkworms after a change of skin, they commence feeding in the most voracious manner directly the new garment is durable enough to admit of their taking their walks abroad, and their temporary seclusion and compulsory abstinence are amply made up by a course of heavy feeding. The lost plumpness and condition soon return. Unlike some crustaceans who are coldly indifferent to the welfare of their offspring, the mamma lobster keeps her little brood about her until the youthful lobsterkins are big enough to start in life for themselves.The coasts of British North America, as well as many portions of the seaboard of the United States, abound in mail-clad inhabitants of many kinds. In some localities great amusement is at times afforded by their capture—a sort of picnic, or lobster frolic, being organised. A boat, with plenty of eatables and drinkables, and a capacious pot, are provided, and long poles with their ends split prepared. On the boat being propelled slowly through the shallow water, a sharp look-out is kept on the regions below, and on the lobster being discovered, the split end of the pole is lowered quietly, and with the greatest caution, until just over the unsuspecting victim’s back, when by a sudden downward thrust the forceps-like instrument securely nips him, and he is brought to the surface in spite of his claws and the pinches he inflicts on the tough, unyielding wood. Some overhanging rock or pleasant nook on the shore is usually selected as a place in which to dine and cook the proceeds of the lobster hunt.[pg 157]LOBSTER (Homarus vulgaris) AND PRAWNS (Palæmon serratus).LOBSTER (Homarus vulgaris) AND PRAWNS (Palæmon serratus).[pg 158]The bays, shallows, and mouths of rivers on the coast of Prince Edward’s Island abound in a species of seaweed known amongst the inhabitants as“eel-grass,”on which vast numbers of lobsters feed as in a rich sea-garden. To these favoured hunting grounds the lobster-catchers betake themselves, and by wading little more than half-leg deep gather as many as they require. A bushel basket has been filled in this way in less than an hour.Like the branching growths of submarine life which form the connecting link between the vegetable and animal kingdoms, we find crustaceans dwelling, so to speak, on the border-lands of other races, and linking the shrimp, crab, and lobster families together; partaking of the nature of each, but being identical with neither; such are the so-calledSquat Lobsters, orGalathea. Their singular alertness renders capture somewhat difficult. Like the lobster, they possess extraordinary powers of vision and retrograde movement. The horns are extremely long, and so sensitive that the slightest touch seems to reveal at once the nature of an approaching object, and enables the alarmed squat to seek a safe sanctuary between the rock clefts, from which it is by no means easy to withdraw him.Thespined lobster,crawfish,cray, orcrowder, will, from its thorn-coated shell, long horns, powerful nippers, and generally formidable appearance, be familiar to most of our readers. Like most other crustaceans, the cray delights in a home among rugged sunken rocks, and is taken in the traps laid for ordinary lobsters and crabs. Their flesh, being of harder texture and sweeter flavour, is objected to by professed lobster-eaters; still, a well-conditioned spined lobster is by no means to be despised. Some portions of the Pacific Ocean, and the warm seas of the East, contain them in vast numbers. Many spots on the coast of South America, and the bays and inlets of the island of Juan Fernandez, literally swarm with them. Some idea may be formed of the abundance of animated creatures of this and other kinds to be taken in these seas by the following account of the fishing to be obtained in them, given by the Hon. F. Walpole:—“The fishing afforded the best return for labour, and a boat might be filled in four hours with hook and line only. Fish swarmed of every size and colour, and seemingly of every variety of appetite, for they took any bait. The bottom was literally lined with crawfish of a large size; some must have weighed five pounds at least. There needed no hook—a piece of anything let down on a string to the bottom was enough; they saw it, grasped it, and kept their hold till you had seized them by their long feelers and borne them into the boat, where they crawled about and extended their feelers as if in search of more bait.... We had crawfish for breakfast, crawfish for dinner, crawfish for supper, and crawfish for any incidental meal we could cram in between.”The coral reefs fringing the island of Mauritius afford shelter to numbers of the family of crawfish, which in both size and splendour of colouring far excel those taken in our seas.The prawn and shrimp are included in the same order as the lobster and the crab, and species of these crustaceans are found in all seas. They are the scavengers of the ocean, and pick and devour any dead matter in the sea; hence they are particularly valuable in the aquarium. The art of shrimping will no doubt be familiar to all our readers, from visits made to our south-coast watering-places. In tropical climates the prawn attains the size of a small lobster—up to nine or ten inches in length, three being considered sufficient for a meal. Prawns are sold in Dublin six and seven inches in length, and are considered splendid feeding.

The Crustaceans, a Crusty Set—Young Crabs and their Peculiarities—Shells and no Shells—Powers of Renewal—The Biter Bit—Cocoa-nut eating Crabs—Do Crabs like Boiling?—The Land Crab and his Migrations—Nigger Excitement—The King Crab—The Hut Crab—A True Yarn—The Hermit or Soldier Crab—Pugnaciousness—Crab War and Human War—Prolific Crustaceans—Raising Lobster-pots—Technical Differences—How do Lobsters shed their Shells?—Fishermen’s Ideas—Habits of the Lobster—Its Fecundity—The Supply for Billingsgate—The Season-“Lobster Frolics”in British North America—Eel-grass—Cray-fish, Prawns, and Shrimps.

The Crustaceans, a Crusty Set—Young Crabs and their Peculiarities—Shells and no Shells—Powers of Renewal—The Biter Bit—Cocoa-nut eating Crabs—Do Crabs like Boiling?—The Land Crab and his Migrations—Nigger Excitement—The King Crab—The Hut Crab—A True Yarn—The Hermit or Soldier Crab—Pugnaciousness—Crab War and Human War—Prolific Crustaceans—Raising Lobster-pots—Technical Differences—How do Lobsters shed their Shells?—Fishermen’s Ideas—Habits of the Lobster—Its Fecundity—The Supply for Billingsgate—The Season-“Lobster Frolics”in British North America—Eel-grass—Cray-fish, Prawns, and Shrimps.

In the Crustacea we find the lowest form of articulate animals. They possess feet, breathe through gills, and derive their name from their hard crusty covering, which is mainly carbonate of lime with colouring matter. They have nearly all of them claws, which most of them know well how to employ offensively.“They have been compared,”says[pg 151]Figuier,“to the heavily-armed knights of the middle ages—at once audacious and cruel; barbed in steel from head to foot, with visor and corselet, arm-pieces and thigh-pieces—scarcely anything, in fact, is wanting to complete the resemblance.”They possess the power of throwing off their calcareous covering, when they become, for the nonce, as vulnerable as they had been before formidable.41

“Among all the curious and quaint forms of animal life to be found in the sea,”says Lord,“few for grotesque oddity can equal the baby crabs, orZoëa, as they are sometimes called. These interesting infants are not the least like their papa or mamma, and no respectable or fully-matured male or femalecrabwould ever own them as his or her offspring. An elfish little creature is the juvenile crab, with a head scarcely deserving the name, and a pair of goggle bull’s-eyes as of two policemen’s lanterns rolled into one, a tail vastly too long for him, and an anti-garotte spear, quite as long as his absurd little body, attached to the spot where his coat-collar should be.... Master Crab’s internal economy is just as curious as his external skeleton. One pair of jaws one would be disposed to think sufficient for any living creature of reasonable requirements, but he possesses eight, and instead of exposing his teeth to the examination of the critical in matters of dentition, he carries them safely stowed away in the interior of his stomach, where they would be excessively hard to get at in cases of crustacean toothache. With such appliances as these the food cannot well be otherwise than perfectly masticated. A crab’s liver is an odd organ to contemplate, and constitutes a considerable portion of the soft interior of the shell-like box in which the heart and other viscera are lodged. That well-known delicacy known as the‘cream’or‘fat’of the crab is liver, and nothing else. The lungs, or gills, are formed by those fringe-like appendages popularly known as the‘dead men’s fingers.’The shell-shifting process before referred to is common to all crustaceans; and our friend the crab, when he feels his corselet getting rather tight for him, manages by some extraordinary process not only to extricate himself from it, together with his shell-gauntlets, and the powerful nippers with which he is provided, but performs other feats, compared with which those of the Davenport Brothers sink into utter insignificance.”

Nearly all the crustaceans are hardy and destructive, and fight not merely their enemies, but among each other. It matters little to them whether they lose a claw or a tail, for after a few weeks of repose those members grow again. Tandon records the fact that lobsters“which in an unfortunate encounter lost a limb, sick and debilitated, reappear at the end of a few months with a perfect limb, vigorous, and ready for service.”On the Spanish coast a certain crab is caught for its claw alone, which is considered excellent eating; this is pulled off, and the mutilated animal thrown back into the sea, likely enough to be retaken, and the same process repeated at some future time. Crustaceans are nearly all carnivorous, and are by no means particular what they eat. Some of them, however, show considerable appreciation for the oyster. Sometimes they eat each other. Mr. Rymer Jones tells a story of one which attacked and commenced to eat one[pg 152]slightly smaller than himself, and was then himself attacked and eaten by a companion, realising the old adage concerning fleas—

“And these have smaller still to bite ’em,And so proceed,ad infinitum.”

“And these have smaller still to bite ’em,

And so proceed,ad infinitum.”

Some crustaceans, however, adopt a vegetable diet. The Robber Crab of the Polynesian Islands can not merely open a cocoa-nut, but also enjoy its contents. The crab begins by tearing off the fibre at the extremity where the fruit is, always choosing the right hand. When this is removed, it strikes it with its great claws until an opening is made; it then inserts its slender claws, and by wriggling and turning itself about removes the contents of the nut.

CRABS (Cancer pagurus).CRABS (Cancer pagurus).

CRABS (Cancer pagurus).

The proper mode of boiling crabs has long been a subject on which doctors have disagreed. Who, then, shall decide? That there is cruelty associated with the taking away of life it would be hard to deny, but the correctness of choice between gradual stewing in slowly-heated water and being plunged at once into the seething, bubbling cauldron requires“the revelations of a boiled crab”to clear up; and until a crustacean production under that or a like title appears, we shall continue to plunge our armour-clad victims in water at 212 degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, and leave the question as to the propriety of our so doing to those who are disposed to grapple with the subject for its own sake.

The West India Islands possess in the Land Crab (Gecarcinus ruricola) a kind of crustacean highlander, who retreats into the uplands at certain times in the year.“As the spawning season approaches a mighty gathering of the clans takes place, and whole legions, unwarned by fiery cross or blazing beacon, hasten forth to join the living tide flowing onward towards the sea. Through the tangled jungle, down the rock-strewed ravine, over fallen tree-trunks, and among the dense undergrowth of the forest, in ceaseless, creeping, crawling, scuttling thousands, still they come onward, and ever onward, as the bright stars shine out to light them on their way. Banks, hedges, walls, and even houses, are passed straight over in this crustacean steeplechase, no flags being needed to keep the mail-clad competitors to the true course. Instinct the guide, and the blue sea for a goal, nothing stops the race.

“Cuffee and his companions, who have been gossiping and story-telling beneath their cocoa-leaf roofs until half asleep, appear to become most violent and incurable lunatics, on suddenly becoming aware of the nocturnal exodus. They leap high in the air, shout, scream, and dance like fiends, whilst the most ready-witted of the crew dash off to‘de massa’with the startling news.‘Hi, golly, sa! de crab! de crab! He come for sure, this time, sure ’nuff. Plenty catch um bime by;’and Cuffee keeps his word to the letter, and captures the pilgrims by the basketful, in spite of their claws. And black-faced, woolly-headed Aunt Lilly, the cook, shows her teeth, like ivory dominoes in an ebony box, as visions of white-snow-like rice, cocoa-nut milk, capsicum-pods, and stewpans, pass in pleasing and appetising review before her; and‘massa’himself takes an extra pull at the cold-sangaree jug, sleeps pleasantly, and dreams of the crab-feast on the morrow.”

THE WEST INDIAN LAND CRAB (Gecarcinus ruricola).THE WEST INDIAN LAND CRAB (Gecarcinus ruricola).

THE WEST INDIAN LAND CRAB (Gecarcinus ruricola).

The King Crab of the eastern seas grows sometimes to an enormous size, while the lance-shaped spear with which he is furnished is used by the Malays as a warlike instrument. Then, for a contrast, there’s the little nut-crab, with his queer little legs tucked up under his[pg 153]body, which rambling jack-tars sometimes gather for their friends at home, under the idea that their shells, when cut and polished, will make handsome brooches and shirt-pins. Major Lord tells a good story of a dry old salt of a quartermaster, on the Indian station, who“chanced one day, when on shore for a cruise, to become possessed of a goodly number of theseluckystones, as he called them, and by way of securing his treasures, placed them in an old silk handkerchief, and stowed them away, with a few dollars and sundry cakes of cavendish, in the corner of his chest. It so happened that some piratical shipmate, not proof against the allurements of honeydew and silver, but totally indifferent to natural history, seized his opportunity and spirited off the tobacco and money, but left the lucky-stones behind. The next day, when our old friend came for his accustomed supply of the weed, he, to his horror, astonishment, and indignation, found the supposed pebbles in active motion, performing foot-races over his best jacket, the handkerchief spread open, and, alas! empty.‘Well!’exclaimed he;‘blow me if this aint too much of the monkey! Why, look ye here, messmates! These here blessed stones have come to life, every man Jack of ’em. They’ve chawed up all my bacca, and spent every mag of my money! and now I’ll[pg 154]heave the beggars to Davy Jones’s locker. Overboard is where I means to pitch ’em.’And so he did, no doubt to the intense gratification of the falsely-accused crabs.”

THE HERMIT CRAB (Pagurus Bernhardus).THE HERMIT CRAB (Pagurus Bernhardus).

THE HERMIT CRAB (Pagurus Bernhardus).

The Hermit, or Soldier, Crab, with the exception of a kind of cuirass, or head-piece, has a soft, yielding skin. Knowing his own weakness, he invariably entrenches himself in some safe place, not unfrequently emptying the shell of some other marine animal. When he outgrows his borrowed habitation he looks out for some larger dwelling. He is a very timid creature, and retires at the least alarm. On the other hand, among his kind he is strong, voracious, and cruel. Two hermit crabs cannot meet without a fight brewing, but it rarely comes off.“Each extends his long pincers, and seems to try to touch the other, much as a spider does, when it seeks to seize a fly on its most vulnerable side; but each finding the other armed in proof and perfectly protected, though eager to fight, usually adopts the better part of valour, and prudently withdraws. They often have true passages of arms, nevertheless, in which claws are spread out and displayed in the most threatening manner, the two adversaries tumbling head over heels, and rolling one upon the other, but they get more frightened than hurt.”Mr. Gosse, however, describes a struggle which had a tragic end. A hermit met a brother hermit pleasantly lodged in a shell much more spacious than his own. He seized it by the head with his powerful claws, tore it from its asylum with the speed of lightning, and took its place not less promptly, leaving the dispossessed unfortunate struggling on the sand in convulsions of agony.“Our battles,”says Bonnet,“have rarely such important objects in view;theyfight each other for a house.”A young poet of to-day42sings ofourwars—

“Tell me, tell me, is this glory?Is it honour, is it fame?Has mankind, through ages hoary,Given to war its fitting name?Twist it, turn it, warp it, bind it,Greet its triumphs with acclaim,Yet at last the world will find itOnly murder, all the same!”

“Tell me, tell me, is this glory?

Is it honour, is it fame?

Has mankind, through ages hoary,

Given to war its fitting name?

Twist it, turn it, warp it, bind it,

Greet its triumphs with acclaim,

Yet at last the world will find it

Only murder, all the same!”

Both crabs and lobsters are amazingly prolific, and lay an enormous number of eggs: it is computed that each female produces from 12,000 to 20,000 in a season; and yet these shell-fish are always dear in London! In France, Figuier tells us, the size of the marketable lobster is regulated by law, and fixed at a minimum of eight inches in length: all under that length are contraband. The London market is supplied from every part of our coasts, and very largely from Norway. At Kamble, near Southampton, one owner has storing-ponds, or tanks, for 50,000 at a time; and he has his own smacks constantly running to the coasts of France, Scotland, and Ireland.

The Lobster (Homarus vulgaris) is found in great abundance all round our coasts. Who that has frequented our seaside watering-places has not either gone out to assist in hauling up the lobster-pots, or, at all events, seen the fishermen returning with their spoils? And whatcanbe finer than a lobster boiled, say not more than half an hour after his capture from the briny? He tastes very unlike the poor creature which has been conveyed by boat[pg 155]or train to London, and knocked about in barrows, carts, markets, and shops, until he wishes they would boil him, and have done with it at once. Lobster-pots are, practically, wicker-basket traps. The hole at the bottom allows free ingress, but makes it difficult for the victim to get out. They are baited with garbage, and the position of each on the rocks or sand below is marked by a buoy. Each fisherman has his own private mark on them; and woe to the lobster-thief, as to the crab-thief! Sometimes nets are used for catching lobsters.

Mr. Pennant says that large lobsters are in their best season from the middle of October to the beginning of May. The smaller ones are good all the summer. If they are four-and-a-half inches long from the top of the head to the end of the back shell they are called“sizable”lobsters; if under four inches,“half-size,”and two are reckoned as one of size. Under four inches, they are called“pawks.”

There is little doubt that up to a certain age lobsters shed their shells annually, but the mode of performance is not quite understood to-day.“It is supposed that the old shell is cast, and that the animal retires to some lurking-place till the new covering acquires consistence to contend with his armour-clad congeners.... The most probable conjecture is that the shell sloughs off piecemeal, as it does in the cray-fish. The greatest mystery of all, perhaps, is the process by which the lobster withdraws the fleshy part of its claws from their calcareous covering. Fishermen say the lobster pines before casting its shell, and thus gets thin, so as to permit of its withdrawing its members from it.”He sheds tears first, and shell second.

The common English lobster, as seen in the fishmonger’s shop, is very unlike his relatives beneath the waves.“The curled-up form,”says Major Lord,“in which he is seen when so exposed is not that usually assumed in his own element, except in the act of exerting its immense powers of retrograde motion. These are so great that one sudden downward sweep of its curiously-constructed oar-like tail is sufficient to send it like an arrow, three or four and twenty feet, with the most extraordinary precision, thereby enabling our friend to retreat with the greatest rapidity into nooks, corners, and crevices among the rocks, where pursuit would be hopeless. His eyes being arranged on foot-stalks, or stems, are free from the inconvenient trammels of sockets, and possess a radius of vision commanding both front and rear, and from their compound form (being made up of a number of square lenses) are extremely penetrating and powerful. The slightest shadow passing over the pool in which the lobster may chance to be crawling or swimming will frequently cause one of these backward shoots to be made, and the lobster vanishes into some cleft or cavity with a rapidity of motion which no harlequin could ever, in his wildest dreams, hope to achieve. Down among the deep channels, between the crags at the sea’s bottom, alarms, except from the sea-robbers themselves, are not to be dreaded. Here the lobsters are at home, and in such spots the wicker trap, or the trunk net, may be laid down for them: nets of this kind are in general use. They are made by fastening a number of stout wooden hoops to longitudinal bars, and covering them with network. Their internal construction is much like that of the crab-pot, only there are two entrances instead of one, and twine is used instead of willows or twigs to prevent the prisoners from escaping. Heavy stones are attached to them as sinkers. Fish offal is used as bait, and corks at the end of lines serve to point out their position and haul them up by.[pg 156]Lobsters are prolific creatures, and it is well that they are so, considering the enormous quantities consumed every day in England alone.

“It has been computed that each fully-matured female will produce from 18,000 to 20,000 eggs, and there is little doubt but that with proper management and the expenditure of a very small capital artificial fecundation of the ova might be most successfully and profitably conducted in this country. Much attention has of late been paid to this subject in France, and many most interesting experiments in connection with it have been tried. The number of lobsters brought every season to Billingsgate Market will serve to give some idea of the importance of lobster fishing, and the sums of money which must change hands in connection with it. Calculations show that from the coasts of England, Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands 150,000 lobsters per season reach Billingsgate, exclusive of the supply of Norway lobsters, which are even more abundantly supplied, over 600,000 per season being imported. It not unfrequently happens that one day’s supply for that great emporium of sea dainties reaches as high as 25,000, and here at early morning, long before mighty London is fairly up for the day, a scene of bustle and activity may be witnessed which well repays the early riser. Steam in clouds floats above the vast loads of newly-boiled crustaceans and molluscs; and carts of every size and pattern block the way.”

The regular lobster season lasts from the month of March to August. About the middle or latter end of the last-mentioned month the shifting of shells takes place, and the fish is unfit for human food; but, like the silkworms after a change of skin, they commence feeding in the most voracious manner directly the new garment is durable enough to admit of their taking their walks abroad, and their temporary seclusion and compulsory abstinence are amply made up by a course of heavy feeding. The lost plumpness and condition soon return. Unlike some crustaceans who are coldly indifferent to the welfare of their offspring, the mamma lobster keeps her little brood about her until the youthful lobsterkins are big enough to start in life for themselves.

The coasts of British North America, as well as many portions of the seaboard of the United States, abound in mail-clad inhabitants of many kinds. In some localities great amusement is at times afforded by their capture—a sort of picnic, or lobster frolic, being organised. A boat, with plenty of eatables and drinkables, and a capacious pot, are provided, and long poles with their ends split prepared. On the boat being propelled slowly through the shallow water, a sharp look-out is kept on the regions below, and on the lobster being discovered, the split end of the pole is lowered quietly, and with the greatest caution, until just over the unsuspecting victim’s back, when by a sudden downward thrust the forceps-like instrument securely nips him, and he is brought to the surface in spite of his claws and the pinches he inflicts on the tough, unyielding wood. Some overhanging rock or pleasant nook on the shore is usually selected as a place in which to dine and cook the proceeds of the lobster hunt.

LOBSTER (Homarus vulgaris) AND PRAWNS (Palæmon serratus).LOBSTER (Homarus vulgaris) AND PRAWNS (Palæmon serratus).

LOBSTER (Homarus vulgaris) AND PRAWNS (Palæmon serratus).

The bays, shallows, and mouths of rivers on the coast of Prince Edward’s Island abound in a species of seaweed known amongst the inhabitants as“eel-grass,”on which vast numbers of lobsters feed as in a rich sea-garden. To these favoured hunting grounds the lobster-catchers betake themselves, and by wading little more than half-leg deep gather as many as they require. A bushel basket has been filled in this way in less than an hour.

Like the branching growths of submarine life which form the connecting link between the vegetable and animal kingdoms, we find crustaceans dwelling, so to speak, on the border-lands of other races, and linking the shrimp, crab, and lobster families together; partaking of the nature of each, but being identical with neither; such are the so-calledSquat Lobsters, orGalathea. Their singular alertness renders capture somewhat difficult. Like the lobster, they possess extraordinary powers of vision and retrograde movement. The horns are extremely long, and so sensitive that the slightest touch seems to reveal at once the nature of an approaching object, and enables the alarmed squat to seek a safe sanctuary between the rock clefts, from which it is by no means easy to withdraw him.

Thespined lobster,crawfish,cray, orcrowder, will, from its thorn-coated shell, long horns, powerful nippers, and generally formidable appearance, be familiar to most of our readers. Like most other crustaceans, the cray delights in a home among rugged sunken rocks, and is taken in the traps laid for ordinary lobsters and crabs. Their flesh, being of harder texture and sweeter flavour, is objected to by professed lobster-eaters; still, a well-conditioned spined lobster is by no means to be despised. Some portions of the Pacific Ocean, and the warm seas of the East, contain them in vast numbers. Many spots on the coast of South America, and the bays and inlets of the island of Juan Fernandez, literally swarm with them. Some idea may be formed of the abundance of animated creatures of this and other kinds to be taken in these seas by the following account of the fishing to be obtained in them, given by the Hon. F. Walpole:—“The fishing afforded the best return for labour, and a boat might be filled in four hours with hook and line only. Fish swarmed of every size and colour, and seemingly of every variety of appetite, for they took any bait. The bottom was literally lined with crawfish of a large size; some must have weighed five pounds at least. There needed no hook—a piece of anything let down on a string to the bottom was enough; they saw it, grasped it, and kept their hold till you had seized them by their long feelers and borne them into the boat, where they crawled about and extended their feelers as if in search of more bait.... We had crawfish for breakfast, crawfish for dinner, crawfish for supper, and crawfish for any incidental meal we could cram in between.”The coral reefs fringing the island of Mauritius afford shelter to numbers of the family of crawfish, which in both size and splendour of colouring far excel those taken in our seas.

The prawn and shrimp are included in the same order as the lobster and the crab, and species of these crustaceans are found in all seas. They are the scavengers of the ocean, and pick and devour any dead matter in the sea; hence they are particularly valuable in the aquarium. The art of shrimping will no doubt be familiar to all our readers, from visits made to our south-coast watering-places. In tropical climates the prawn attains the size of a small lobster—up to nine or ten inches in length, three being considered sufficient for a meal. Prawns are sold in Dublin six and seven inches in length, and are considered splendid feeding.

[pg 159]CHAPTER XIV.Ocean Life.—The Harvest of the Sea.Fishes and their Swimming Apparatus—The Bladder—Scientific Classification—Cartilaginous Fish—The Torpedo—A Living Galvanic Battery—The Shark—His Love for Man in a Gastronomic Sense—Stories of their Prowess—Catching a Shark—Their Interference with Whaling—The Tiger-Shark—African Worship of the Monster—The Dog-fish—The Sturgeon—Enormous Fecundity—Caviare—The Bony Fishes—The Flying Fish: its Feats; its Enemies—Youth of a Salmon—The Parr, the Smolt, and the Grilse—Flourishes in the Sea—The Ponds at Stormontfield—The Salmon’s Enemies—The Ettrick Shepherd—Canned Salmon, and where it comes from—The Fish a Drug in N. W. America—Canoes impeded by them—The Fisheries of the Columbia River—The Fishing Season—Modes of Catching Salmon—The Factories and Processes employed.And now we proceed to still higher organisations. The fish must have their turn in a work treating of their natural home, the ocean.43Fishes, intended always to live in water, have wonderful organs to aid them in swimming.“The anterior limbs,”says Figuier,“which correspond with the arms in man and the wings in birds, are attached to each side of the trunk, immediately behind the head, and form the pectoral fins. The posterior limbs occupy the lower surface of the body, and form the ventral fins. The latter, which are always over the ventral line, may be placed before, beneath, or, as is most usual, behind the former. Fishes possess, besides these two pair of fins, odd fins. The fins which are found on the back or dorsum are called the back or dorsal fins, those at the end of the tail are the caudal fins; finally, there is frequently another attached to the lower extremity of the body, which is called the anal fin. These fins are always nearly of the same structure, consisting generally of a fold of the skin, supported by slender, flexible, cartilaginous, or osseous rays, connected by a thin membrane.”The muscles which move these fins are powerful. Further, nearly all species of fish possess a swimming bladder, over which the animal has control, and can thereby increase or diminish the specific gravity of its body. Immediately behind the head are the gill openings; respiration is effected by water, in its natural state always charged with air, being taken in at the mouth, which passes over the gills, and is afterwards ejected. The eyes in fish are usually very large.The scientific classification of fishes usually adopted is that of Muller. He divided them into five groups, theLeptocardia,Cyclostomata,Selachia,Ganoidea, andTeleostea. The first of these is represented by a single genus,Amphioxus, a little slender gelatinous fish, rarely over two inches in length, and commonly found on all sandy coasts. The second order is characterised as serpentine, void of fins, and with a mouth formed for suction. The lamprey is a familiar example.The third order,Selachia, includes a number of cartilaginous fish, varying much in form; the rays, dog-fish, skate, torpedo, shark, and saw-fish belong to this important division. The torpedo has the power of giving a strong electrical shock. Redi, an Italian naturalist of the seventeenth century, first studied them carefully. He caught and landed an electric ray, and pressing it with his hand, experienced a tingling sensation, which extended to his arms and shoulders, and was followed by a disagreeable trembling. This electric power dies with the animal. Dr. Walsh made some interesting experiments with them. He placed[pg 160]a living torpedo on a clean wet towel, and connected brass wires with it. Round the torpedo were eight persons, standing on isolating substances. One end of the wire was placed in a basin full of water. The first person had a finger of one hand in this basin, and a finger of the other in a second basin, also full of water. The second person had a finger in the last-named basin, and a finger of the other hand in a third basin, and so on round the circle of eight persons. The end of the second wire was plunged into the last basin of the series, thus establishing a complete electric circuit. At the moment when the experimenter touched the torpedo a tolerably strong shock was felt by all participating. When the torpedo was placed on an isolated supporter, it showed its energy by communicating to several persons forty or fifty shocks in the short space of a minute and a half.The familyCarcharidæincludes the true sharks, some species of which attain to a length of twenty, or even thirty, feet. They are the terror of all other fish and molluscs.“But the prey which has the greatest charm for him is man; the shark loves him dearly, but it is with the affection of the gourmand. If we may believe some travellers, when several varieties of human food comes in its way, the shark prefers the European to the Asiatic, and both to the negro.”He has been known to jump clean aboard a fisherman’s boat, and even to snap up a sailor from the shrouds. Commerson relates the following:—The corpse of a negro had been suspended from a yard-armtwenty feetabove the level of the sea. A shark was seen making every effort to reach the body, which eventually he did, and tore it limb from limb in presence of the horror-stricken crew. The mouth of the shark is placed in the lower part of the head, and the animal has to turn itself in the water before he can seize an object above him. On the African coast the negroes take advantage of this fact; they swim towards him, and seize the moment when he turns to rip up his belly with a large strong knife. The adult shark has six rows of murderous-looking teeth, forming a perfect arsenal of deadly weapons.Captain Basil Hall describes the mode by which sharks are sometimes captured.“The sharp-curved dorsal fin of a huge shark was seen rising about six inches above the water, and cutting the glazed surface of the sea by as fine a line as if a sickle had been drawn along it.‘Messenger, run to the cook for a piece of pork,’cried the captain, taking the command with as much glee as if an enemy’s cruiser had been in sight.‘Where’s your hook, quartermaster?’‘Here, sir, here,’cried the fellow, feeling the point, and declaring it was as sharp as any lady’s needle, and in the next instant piercing with it a huge junk of pork weighing four or five pounds. The hook, which is as large as one’s little finger, has a curvature about as large as a man’s hand when half closed, and is six or eight inches in length, while a formidable line, furnished with three or four feet of chain attached to the end of the mizen topsail halyard, is now cast into the ship’s wake.“Sometimes the very instant the bait is cast over the stern the shark flies at it with such eagerness that he actually springs partially out of the water. This, however, is rare. On these occasions he gorges the bait, the hook, and a foot or two of the chain, without any mastication, and darts off with the treacherous prize with such prodigious velocity that it makes the rope crack again as soon as the coil is drawn out. Much dexterity is required in the hand which holds the line at this moment. A bungler is apt[pg 161]to be too precipitate, and jerk away the hook before it has got far enough into the shark’s stomach. The secret of the sport is to let the monster gulp down the whole bait, and then to give the line a violent pull, by which the barbed point buries itself in the coat of the stomach. When the hook is first fixed it spins out like the log-line of a ship going twelve knots.“The suddenness of the jerk with which the shark is brought up often turns him quite over. No sailor, however, thinks of hauling one on board merely by the rope fastened to the hook. To prevent the line breaking, the hook snapping, or the jaw being torn away, a running bowline is adopted. This noose is slipped down the rope and passed over the monster’s head, and is made to join at the point of junction of the tail with the body; and now the first part of the fun is held to be completed. The vanquished enemy is easily drawn up over the taffrail, and flung on deck, to the delight of the crew.”Even then he is sometimes a very formidable enemy. The flesh of the shark, though sometimes eaten, is coarse and leathery.THE COMMON SHARK (Carcharias vulgaris).THE COMMON SHARK (Carcharias vulgaris).On several of the smaller islands of the Spanish Main whaling stations are established. After the huge fish have been captured, they are towed by the boats to one of these stations, and the blubber is stripped off and carried on shore to the boiling-house in large white blocks, where a simple apparatus is set up for“trying-out”the oil. It sometimes happens that immediately after the whale has been killed the sharks surround it in such numbers, and devour the blubber with such rapacity, that if the distance be great and the currents adverse, the greater part has been eaten off before the whale can be towed ashore; and the labour of the fishermen is thus thrown away.The tiger-shark is a more formidable monster than others of its tribe, because of its power of seizing its prey without turning on its back or side. It is enabled to do this from the great size of its mouth, and from its position, which is near the end of the snout, instead of underneath, as in other varieties of the shark.“As soon as the carcase of the whale has been stripped of its blubber, it is towed out at high water to a sufficient distance from the station to ensure of its being carried away by the falling tide. This is necessary, for the stench from so large a mass of putrefying flesh, exposed as it has been to the intense action of a tropical sun for three or four days, is more than unpleasant.“Now is the opportunity for the shark-hunters. They take possession of the remains, tow them to some convenient nook of the Bocas, as the channels between the islands are called, and there anchor them. All is now prepared, and nothing remains but eagerly and silently to watch for the assembly of the ravenous brutes to their midnight orgies.”The liver of the shark yields a most valuable oil, largely used in the colony as a[pg 162]substitute for cod-liver oil. The liver of a shark fifteen feet long will yield from twelve to sixteen gallons of oil.The canoes used for shark-hunting are some twenty feet in length. In the bow a deep groove is cut, to guide the rope after the fish has been struck. A coil of fifteen fathoms of rope, carefully arranged under the thwarts, is secured at one end to a piece of strong chain, at the other end of which is a harpoon. A lance is kept on board to assist in giving thecoup de grâceto the shark when he has exhausted himself sufficiently.The inhabitants of many parts of the African coasts worship the shark, and consider its stomach the road to heaven. Three or four times a year they row out and offer the shark poultry and goats to satisfy his appetite. This is not all; a child is once a year sacrificed to the monster, which has been specially fattened for this occasion from its birth to the age of ten. On thefêteday, the unfortunate little victim is bound to a post on a sandy point at low water; as the tide rises the sharks arrive. The child may shriek, and the mother may weep, but it is of no avail; even its own parent thinks that the horrible sacrifice will ensure her child’s entry into heaven.THE DOG-FISH (Acanthias vulgaris).THE DOG-FISH (Acanthias vulgaris).The dog-fish—from which we derive the skin known asshagreen, used for spectacle and other cases—the furious and voracious hammerhead, and the saw-fish, belong to the same great order. The last named will attack any inhabitant of the deep whatever, and even dares to measure his strength with the whale. Its length is from twelve to fifteen feet, while its weapon of defence is sometimes as much as two yards in length. Occasionally it dashes itself against the side of a ship with such fury as to leave its sword broken in the timber.Of the fourth great order,Ganoidea, the sturgeon is the most prominent example. It is essentially a sea-fish, although ascending rivers at stated periods, as does the salmon. It is particularly noticeable for the number of bony plates or scales on its back and belly. In the sea the sturgeon feeds on herrings, mackerel, and other fish; in the rivers on salmon. It is caught in traps, or in nets. The prepared roe, cleaned, washed in vinegar, and partially dried, is the caviare of the Russians. The eggs of a female sturgeon will weigh over one-third of its entire body, and as they sometimes reach a weight of nearly 3,000 pounds, the preparation of caviare becomes an important and profitable industry.THE GLOBE-FISH (Tetrodon) AND SUN-FISH (Orthagoriscus mola).THE GLOBE-FISH (Tetrodon) AND SUN-FISH (Orthagoriscus mola).THE PIPE FISH (Syngnathus acus).THE PIPE FISH (Syngnathus acus).The fifth order,Teleostea, or bony fishes, constitutes a lengthy series. Among it must be placed the globular and phosphorescent sun-fish, the spiny globe-fish, the bony trunk-fish, and the cuirassed pipe-fish, the sea-horse, which has a head not unlike a horse, and floats vertically, the flying-fish, the eels, herrings, salmon, carp, cod, flat-fish, mullets, tunnies, and others too numerous to mention. It is for man’s purposes the most important of all the orders.THE FLYING-FISH (Exocœtus exiliens.)THE FLYING-FISH (Exocœtus exiliens.)The flying-fish have been incidentally mentioned before in this work. Captain Basil Hall observed a flight of 200 yards; they have come on board a vessel fourteen or fifteen feet, and into the chains of a line-of-battle ship twenty feet above the water. They are considerably harassed by the attacks of other fish, and when they take to the air often fall victims to gulls and other sea-birds. Sharks and dolphins are their particular enemies. Their glittering, silvery brilliancy is most beautiful in the brightness of tropical seas.[pg 163]Among the most important bony fishes must certainly be first placed the salmon, which includes three well-known species,Salmo salar(the salmon itself),S. fario(the salmon trout), andS. trutta(the trout). The early life of the salmon is interesting. The infant fry is primarily, of course, very helpless, and during the first two or three weeks of its existence carries about with it, as a provision for food, a portion of the yolk of the egg from which it was hatched. This generally lasts it from twenty to forty days. It is two years before the youngster ventures out to sea. In the first stage the young salmon is called aparr; during the second it is asmolt,i.e., a parr plus a covering of silvery scales. The smolt, which in the course of its two or more years’ stay in the river has only attained a growth of six or eight inches, returns from the sea in a couple of months weighing three or four pounds, and after six months ten or twelve pounds. It is now agrilse.Dr. Bertram says of the salmon’s growth:—“The sea-feeding must be favourable, and the condition of the fish well suited to the salt-water to ensure such rapid growth—a rapidity which every visit of the fish to the ocean serves but to confirm. Various fish, whilst in the grilse state, have been marked to prove this; and at every migration they returned to their breeding-stream with added weight and improved health. What the salmon feeds upon whilst in the salt-water is not well known, as the digestion of the fish is so rapid as to prevent the discovery of food in their stomachs when they are captured and opened. Guesses have been made, and it is likely that these approximate to the truth; but the old story of the rapid voyage of the salmon to the North Pole and back again turns out, like the theory upon which was built up the herring migration romance, to be a mere myth.“None of our naturalists have yet attempted to elucidate that mystery of salmon life which converts one-half of the fish into sea-going smolts, whilst as yet the other moiety remain as parr. It has been investigated so far at the breeding-ponds at Stormontfield, but without resolving the question. There is another point of doubt as to salmon life which I shall also have a word to say about—namely, whether or not that fish makes two visits annually to the sea; likewise, whether it be probable that a smolt remains in the salt water for nearly a year before it becomes a grilse. A salmon only stays, as it is popularly supposed, a very short time in the salt water; and as it is one of the quickest-swimming fishes we have, it is able to reach a distant river in a very short space of time, therefore it is most desirable we should know what it does with itself when it is not migrating from one water to the other; because, according to the opinion of some naturalists, it would speedily become so deteriorated in the river as to be unequal to the slightest exertion....“At every stage of its career the salmon is surrounded by enemies. At the very moment of spawning, the female is watched by a horde of devourers, who instinctively flock to the breeding-grounds in order to feast on the ova. The hungry pike, the lethargic perch, the greedy trout, the very salmon itself, are lying in wait, all agape for the palatable roe, and greedily swallowing whatever quantity the current carries down. Then the waterfowl eagerly pounces on the precious deposit the moment it has been forsaken by the fish; and if it escape being gobbled up by such cormorants, the spawn[pg 164]may be washed away by a flood, or the position of the bed may be altered, and the ova be destroyed, perhaps for want of water. As an instance of the loss incidental to salmon-spawning in the natural way, I may just mention that a whiting of about three-quarters of a pound weight has been taken in the Tay with three hundred impregnated salmon ova in its stomach! If this fish had been allowed to dine and breakfast at this rate during the whole of the spawning season it would have been difficult to estimate the loss our fisheries would have sustained by his voracity. No sooner do the eggs ripen, and the young fish come to life, than they are exposed, in their defenceless state, to be preyed upon by all the enemies already enumerated; while, as parr, they have been taken out of our streams in such quantities as to be available for the purpose of pig-feeding and manure! Some economists estimate that only one egg out of every thousand becomes a full-sized salmon. Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart calculated that 150,000,000 of salmon ova are annually deposited in the river Tay; of which only 50,000,000, or one-third, come to life and attain the parr stage; that 20,000,000 of these parr become in time smolts, and that their number is ultimately diminished to 100,000; of which 70,000 are caught, the other 30,000 being left for breeding purposes. Sir Humphry Davy calculated that if a salmon produced 17,000 roe, only 800 of these would arrive at maturity. It is well, therefore, that the female fish yields 1,000 eggs for each pound of her weight; for a lesser degree of fecundity, keeping in view the enormous waste of life indicated by these figures, would long since—especially taking into account the destructive modes of fishing that used a few years ago to be in use—have resulted in the extinction of this valuable fish.“The first person who‘took a thought about the matter’—i.e., as to whether the[pg 165]parr was or was not the young of the salmon—and arrived at a solid conclusion, was James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who, in his usual impulsive way, proceeded to verify his opinions. He had, while herding sheep, many opportunities of watching the fishing streams, and, like most of his class, he wielded his fishing-rod with considerable skill. While angling in the tributaries of some of the Border salmon-streams, he had often caught the parr as it was changing into the smolt, and had, after close observation, come to the conclusion that the little parr was none other than the infant salmon. Mr. Hogg did not keep his discovery a secret, and the more his facts were controverted by the naturalists of the day the louder became his proclamations. He had suspected all his life that parr were salmon in their first stage. He would catch a parr with a few straggling scales upon it; he would look at this fish, and think it queer; instantly he would catch another, a little better covered with silver scales, but all loose, and not adhering to the body. Again, he would catch a smolt, manifestly a smolt, all covered with the white silver scales, yet still rather loose upon the skin, which would come off in his hand. Removing these scales, he found the parr with the blue finger-marks below them, and that the fish were young salmon then became as manifest to the shepherd as that a lamb, if suffered to live, would become a sheep. Wondering at this, he marked a great number of the lesser fish, and offered rewards (characteristically enough, of whisky) to the peasantry to bring him such as had evidently undergone the change predicted by him. When this conclusion was settled in his mind, the Shepherd at once proclaimed his new-gained knowledge.‘What will the fishermen of Scotland think’said he,‘when I assure them, on the faith of long experience and observation, and on the word of one who can have no interest in instilling an untruth into their minds, that every insignificant parr with which the cockney fisher fills his basket is a salmon lost!’These crude attempts of the impulsive Shepherd of Ettrick—and he was hotly opposed by the late Mr. Buist, of Stormontfield—were not without their fruits; indeed, they were so successful as quite to convince him that parr were young salmon in their firststage.”[pg 166]The following amusing dialogue on the habits of the salmon once took place between the Ettrick Shepherd and a friend:—“Shepherd:—‘I maintain that ilka saumon comes aye back again frae the sea till spawn in its ain water.’“Friend:—‘Toots, toots, Jamie! hoo can it manage till do that? Hoo, in the name o’ wonder, can a fish, travelling up a turbid water frae the sea, know when it reaches the entrance to its birthplace, or that it has arrived at the tributary that was its cradle?’“Shepherd:—‘Man, the great wonder to me is no hoo the fish get back, but hoo they find their way till the sea first ava, seein’ that they’ve never been there afore!’”The canned salmon, now generally popular in England, and which, though some few years ago an expensive luxury, is now within the reach of all, comes principally from the Columbia River, Oregon, and other parts of the North Pacific coasts. In North-Western America the fish is a perfect drug in the market. In a city like San Francisco it sells for eight cents (4d.) per pound. Higher up the coast a large fish is obtained for a quarter to half a dollar. Further north a piece of tobacco or a few needles will purchase a twenty or thirty pound salmon. They are so abundant that the writer has seen them on the beaches of streams and creeks falling into Frazer River, British Columbia, by the score, bleeding, gasping, and dying, having literally crowded each other out of the water.“Schools”of them are often so densely packed together, that they impede the progress of canoes and boats.The salmon fisheries of the Columbia, Oregon, itself one of the grandest rivers in the world, give employment to 4,000 men during the season, and nearly all the canned salmon consumed in Europe comes from it.44There are dozens of rivers on the north-west coast equally available, and the business even now is in its infancy; while salted, pickled, or smoked salmon, hardly ever reaches England from there at all. As will appear, there are splendid opportunities on that coast for hundreds of new-comers, it may almost be said with or without capital. It is needless to state that the former is always to be preferred. Where isn’t it?Some ten or a dozen varieties of salmon and salmon-trout, Mr. Murphy tells us, enter the rivers of North-Western America, but only one is selected for commercial purposes. Two of the most delicate-eating varieties—the silvery-white and spring salmons—are never packed in tins, because their schools are less abundant and the fish themselves smaller. The hook-nosed and dog salmons are rarely eaten, except by Indians; while the man has not yet been discovered who would tackle the hump-back. The blue-back, or weak-toothed salmon, an inferior fish also, is only exported to the Sandwich Islands, where the natives are said to really prefer its lean and fibrous flesh to the more delicately-flavoured and succulent kinds. The salmon principally caught is distinguished by the Indians as the“Tyhee,”or chief; it is abundant, large, and most excellent eating; it possesses those“all-round”qualifications which particularly fit it for commerce and cooking. It is theSalmo quinnatof the naturalists.The fishery season on the Columbia lasts from the beginning of April to the end of[pg 167]July, and the fisheries extend along the river for a hundred miles or more. Some of the curing establishments employ their own men to tend the nets, while others purchase from fishermen, the price for fish weighing from fifteen to forty pounds ranging from 25 cents to 50 cents (approximately one to two shillings). These prices would seem ridiculously low were it not for the abundance of the fish and the ease with which they are taken. A party of four men may secure from 300 to 2,000 salmon in twenty-four hours! Take the lowest estimate—300 at 25 cents. This gives 75 dollars (or £15) to divide among the four fishermen. But this would be a very poor catch. A thousand fish are no uncommon haul. This at the lowest price paid would give 250 dollars (£50) to be divided. Of course there is the wear and tear of boat and fishing gear to be considered.Large quantities of the fish are caught in weirs. The Indians, also, knowing that the salmon avoids currents if possible, build out into the river from the shore, for ten or a dozen feet, walls of stone a few inches in height. The salmon crowd into the quieter water caused thereby, and are easily captured in nets or by spearing. They are so numerous in places that the Indian can often flap them out of the water, by a sudden dexterous jerk of his paddle, to his squaw on the beach, who then immediately knocks them on the head and guts them.At the curing houses, mostly owned by Americans, the labour is chiefly performed by Chinamen under the superintendence of white men.“John”quickly and cleverly guts the fish and cuts off its head; then cuts it into chunks, which are boiled, first in salt and afterwards in fresh water. Next the tins are filled, and soldered down, all but one little hole in their tops. The tins are then immersed in boiling water, and when every particle of air is excluded, a few drops of solder effectually seal them up till wanted for the table. The process is in effect the same employed in the preservation of meats and fruits in tins.Many British and Irish waterfalls are celebrated for their salmon leaps. In Inverness-shire at Kilmorack, at Ballyshannon in Donegal, and Leixlip near Dublin, in Pembrokeshire and elsewhere, the leaps are noted, and at many of them there are osier baskets placed below to catch the fish when they fail and fall. Sportsmen have even shot them, on the wing as it were, in their leap. At the Falls of Kilmorack“Lord Lovat conceived the idea of placing a furnace and frying-pan on a point of rock overhanging the river. After their unsuccessful effort some of the unfortunate salmon would fall accidentally into the frying-pan. The noble lord could thus boast that the resources of his country were so abundant, that on placing a furnace and frying-pan on the banks of its rivers, the salmon would leap into it of their own accord, without troubling the sportsman to catch them. It is more probable, however, that Lord Lovat knew that the way to enjoy salmon in perfection is to cook it when fresh from the water, and before the richer parts of the fish have ceased to curd.”In our own land, the Tweed, Tay, Spey, and Severn, are all noted rivers for salmon; the Tay fish sometimes weigh sixty pounds. It is a curious fact that the full-grown salmon never feeds in the rivers.“Juvenile experience on the part of the fish, recurring as a phantasm, causes them to snap at a shining artificial minnow or a gaudy fly, but they never rise out of the water; the bait must dip to them, and when hooked they shake[pg 168]the intruder as a terrier does a rat.”Their superabundant store of fat enables them to live on themselves, as it were, as do the Asiatic and African doomba sheep when avalanches and heavy snow-falls stop their supplies of herbage.45They become much thinner during their stay in fresh water; their colour becomes duller, and their flavour much depreciated. Izaak Walton’s statement that“the further they get from the sea they be both fatter and better”is utterly erroneous, for they fatten only in the sea. In March, 1845, the Duke of Athole took a ten-pound salmon in the Tay after it had spawned, and attached a medal to it and then let it go to sea. The same individual, with its decoration, was fished up five weeks and a few days afterwards, when it had been to the refreshing salt water. It had more than doubled its weight, for it weighed twenty-one pounds.THE SALMON (Salmo salar).THE SALMON (Salmo salar).

Fishes and their Swimming Apparatus—The Bladder—Scientific Classification—Cartilaginous Fish—The Torpedo—A Living Galvanic Battery—The Shark—His Love for Man in a Gastronomic Sense—Stories of their Prowess—Catching a Shark—Their Interference with Whaling—The Tiger-Shark—African Worship of the Monster—The Dog-fish—The Sturgeon—Enormous Fecundity—Caviare—The Bony Fishes—The Flying Fish: its Feats; its Enemies—Youth of a Salmon—The Parr, the Smolt, and the Grilse—Flourishes in the Sea—The Ponds at Stormontfield—The Salmon’s Enemies—The Ettrick Shepherd—Canned Salmon, and where it comes from—The Fish a Drug in N. W. America—Canoes impeded by them—The Fisheries of the Columbia River—The Fishing Season—Modes of Catching Salmon—The Factories and Processes employed.

Fishes and their Swimming Apparatus—The Bladder—Scientific Classification—Cartilaginous Fish—The Torpedo—A Living Galvanic Battery—The Shark—His Love for Man in a Gastronomic Sense—Stories of their Prowess—Catching a Shark—Their Interference with Whaling—The Tiger-Shark—African Worship of the Monster—The Dog-fish—The Sturgeon—Enormous Fecundity—Caviare—The Bony Fishes—The Flying Fish: its Feats; its Enemies—Youth of a Salmon—The Parr, the Smolt, and the Grilse—Flourishes in the Sea—The Ponds at Stormontfield—The Salmon’s Enemies—The Ettrick Shepherd—Canned Salmon, and where it comes from—The Fish a Drug in N. W. America—Canoes impeded by them—The Fisheries of the Columbia River—The Fishing Season—Modes of Catching Salmon—The Factories and Processes employed.

And now we proceed to still higher organisations. The fish must have their turn in a work treating of their natural home, the ocean.43Fishes, intended always to live in water, have wonderful organs to aid them in swimming.“The anterior limbs,”says Figuier,“which correspond with the arms in man and the wings in birds, are attached to each side of the trunk, immediately behind the head, and form the pectoral fins. The posterior limbs occupy the lower surface of the body, and form the ventral fins. The latter, which are always over the ventral line, may be placed before, beneath, or, as is most usual, behind the former. Fishes possess, besides these two pair of fins, odd fins. The fins which are found on the back or dorsum are called the back or dorsal fins, those at the end of the tail are the caudal fins; finally, there is frequently another attached to the lower extremity of the body, which is called the anal fin. These fins are always nearly of the same structure, consisting generally of a fold of the skin, supported by slender, flexible, cartilaginous, or osseous rays, connected by a thin membrane.”The muscles which move these fins are powerful. Further, nearly all species of fish possess a swimming bladder, over which the animal has control, and can thereby increase or diminish the specific gravity of its body. Immediately behind the head are the gill openings; respiration is effected by water, in its natural state always charged with air, being taken in at the mouth, which passes over the gills, and is afterwards ejected. The eyes in fish are usually very large.

The scientific classification of fishes usually adopted is that of Muller. He divided them into five groups, theLeptocardia,Cyclostomata,Selachia,Ganoidea, andTeleostea. The first of these is represented by a single genus,Amphioxus, a little slender gelatinous fish, rarely over two inches in length, and commonly found on all sandy coasts. The second order is characterised as serpentine, void of fins, and with a mouth formed for suction. The lamprey is a familiar example.

The third order,Selachia, includes a number of cartilaginous fish, varying much in form; the rays, dog-fish, skate, torpedo, shark, and saw-fish belong to this important division. The torpedo has the power of giving a strong electrical shock. Redi, an Italian naturalist of the seventeenth century, first studied them carefully. He caught and landed an electric ray, and pressing it with his hand, experienced a tingling sensation, which extended to his arms and shoulders, and was followed by a disagreeable trembling. This electric power dies with the animal. Dr. Walsh made some interesting experiments with them. He placed[pg 160]a living torpedo on a clean wet towel, and connected brass wires with it. Round the torpedo were eight persons, standing on isolating substances. One end of the wire was placed in a basin full of water. The first person had a finger of one hand in this basin, and a finger of the other in a second basin, also full of water. The second person had a finger in the last-named basin, and a finger of the other hand in a third basin, and so on round the circle of eight persons. The end of the second wire was plunged into the last basin of the series, thus establishing a complete electric circuit. At the moment when the experimenter touched the torpedo a tolerably strong shock was felt by all participating. When the torpedo was placed on an isolated supporter, it showed its energy by communicating to several persons forty or fifty shocks in the short space of a minute and a half.

The familyCarcharidæincludes the true sharks, some species of which attain to a length of twenty, or even thirty, feet. They are the terror of all other fish and molluscs.“But the prey which has the greatest charm for him is man; the shark loves him dearly, but it is with the affection of the gourmand. If we may believe some travellers, when several varieties of human food comes in its way, the shark prefers the European to the Asiatic, and both to the negro.”He has been known to jump clean aboard a fisherman’s boat, and even to snap up a sailor from the shrouds. Commerson relates the following:—The corpse of a negro had been suspended from a yard-armtwenty feetabove the level of the sea. A shark was seen making every effort to reach the body, which eventually he did, and tore it limb from limb in presence of the horror-stricken crew. The mouth of the shark is placed in the lower part of the head, and the animal has to turn itself in the water before he can seize an object above him. On the African coast the negroes take advantage of this fact; they swim towards him, and seize the moment when he turns to rip up his belly with a large strong knife. The adult shark has six rows of murderous-looking teeth, forming a perfect arsenal of deadly weapons.

Captain Basil Hall describes the mode by which sharks are sometimes captured.“The sharp-curved dorsal fin of a huge shark was seen rising about six inches above the water, and cutting the glazed surface of the sea by as fine a line as if a sickle had been drawn along it.‘Messenger, run to the cook for a piece of pork,’cried the captain, taking the command with as much glee as if an enemy’s cruiser had been in sight.‘Where’s your hook, quartermaster?’‘Here, sir, here,’cried the fellow, feeling the point, and declaring it was as sharp as any lady’s needle, and in the next instant piercing with it a huge junk of pork weighing four or five pounds. The hook, which is as large as one’s little finger, has a curvature about as large as a man’s hand when half closed, and is six or eight inches in length, while a formidable line, furnished with three or four feet of chain attached to the end of the mizen topsail halyard, is now cast into the ship’s wake.

“Sometimes the very instant the bait is cast over the stern the shark flies at it with such eagerness that he actually springs partially out of the water. This, however, is rare. On these occasions he gorges the bait, the hook, and a foot or two of the chain, without any mastication, and darts off with the treacherous prize with such prodigious velocity that it makes the rope crack again as soon as the coil is drawn out. Much dexterity is required in the hand which holds the line at this moment. A bungler is apt[pg 161]to be too precipitate, and jerk away the hook before it has got far enough into the shark’s stomach. The secret of the sport is to let the monster gulp down the whole bait, and then to give the line a violent pull, by which the barbed point buries itself in the coat of the stomach. When the hook is first fixed it spins out like the log-line of a ship going twelve knots.

“The suddenness of the jerk with which the shark is brought up often turns him quite over. No sailor, however, thinks of hauling one on board merely by the rope fastened to the hook. To prevent the line breaking, the hook snapping, or the jaw being torn away, a running bowline is adopted. This noose is slipped down the rope and passed over the monster’s head, and is made to join at the point of junction of the tail with the body; and now the first part of the fun is held to be completed. The vanquished enemy is easily drawn up over the taffrail, and flung on deck, to the delight of the crew.”Even then he is sometimes a very formidable enemy. The flesh of the shark, though sometimes eaten, is coarse and leathery.

THE COMMON SHARK (Carcharias vulgaris).THE COMMON SHARK (Carcharias vulgaris).

THE COMMON SHARK (Carcharias vulgaris).

On several of the smaller islands of the Spanish Main whaling stations are established. After the huge fish have been captured, they are towed by the boats to one of these stations, and the blubber is stripped off and carried on shore to the boiling-house in large white blocks, where a simple apparatus is set up for“trying-out”the oil. It sometimes happens that immediately after the whale has been killed the sharks surround it in such numbers, and devour the blubber with such rapacity, that if the distance be great and the currents adverse, the greater part has been eaten off before the whale can be towed ashore; and the labour of the fishermen is thus thrown away.

The tiger-shark is a more formidable monster than others of its tribe, because of its power of seizing its prey without turning on its back or side. It is enabled to do this from the great size of its mouth, and from its position, which is near the end of the snout, instead of underneath, as in other varieties of the shark.

“As soon as the carcase of the whale has been stripped of its blubber, it is towed out at high water to a sufficient distance from the station to ensure of its being carried away by the falling tide. This is necessary, for the stench from so large a mass of putrefying flesh, exposed as it has been to the intense action of a tropical sun for three or four days, is more than unpleasant.

“Now is the opportunity for the shark-hunters. They take possession of the remains, tow them to some convenient nook of the Bocas, as the channels between the islands are called, and there anchor them. All is now prepared, and nothing remains but eagerly and silently to watch for the assembly of the ravenous brutes to their midnight orgies.”

The liver of the shark yields a most valuable oil, largely used in the colony as a[pg 162]substitute for cod-liver oil. The liver of a shark fifteen feet long will yield from twelve to sixteen gallons of oil.

The canoes used for shark-hunting are some twenty feet in length. In the bow a deep groove is cut, to guide the rope after the fish has been struck. A coil of fifteen fathoms of rope, carefully arranged under the thwarts, is secured at one end to a piece of strong chain, at the other end of which is a harpoon. A lance is kept on board to assist in giving thecoup de grâceto the shark when he has exhausted himself sufficiently.

The inhabitants of many parts of the African coasts worship the shark, and consider its stomach the road to heaven. Three or four times a year they row out and offer the shark poultry and goats to satisfy his appetite. This is not all; a child is once a year sacrificed to the monster, which has been specially fattened for this occasion from its birth to the age of ten. On thefêteday, the unfortunate little victim is bound to a post on a sandy point at low water; as the tide rises the sharks arrive. The child may shriek, and the mother may weep, but it is of no avail; even its own parent thinks that the horrible sacrifice will ensure her child’s entry into heaven.

THE DOG-FISH (Acanthias vulgaris).THE DOG-FISH (Acanthias vulgaris).

THE DOG-FISH (Acanthias vulgaris).

The dog-fish—from which we derive the skin known asshagreen, used for spectacle and other cases—the furious and voracious hammerhead, and the saw-fish, belong to the same great order. The last named will attack any inhabitant of the deep whatever, and even dares to measure his strength with the whale. Its length is from twelve to fifteen feet, while its weapon of defence is sometimes as much as two yards in length. Occasionally it dashes itself against the side of a ship with such fury as to leave its sword broken in the timber.

Of the fourth great order,Ganoidea, the sturgeon is the most prominent example. It is essentially a sea-fish, although ascending rivers at stated periods, as does the salmon. It is particularly noticeable for the number of bony plates or scales on its back and belly. In the sea the sturgeon feeds on herrings, mackerel, and other fish; in the rivers on salmon. It is caught in traps, or in nets. The prepared roe, cleaned, washed in vinegar, and partially dried, is the caviare of the Russians. The eggs of a female sturgeon will weigh over one-third of its entire body, and as they sometimes reach a weight of nearly 3,000 pounds, the preparation of caviare becomes an important and profitable industry.

THE GLOBE-FISH (Tetrodon) AND SUN-FISH (Orthagoriscus mola).THE GLOBE-FISH (Tetrodon) AND SUN-FISH (Orthagoriscus mola).

THE GLOBE-FISH (Tetrodon) AND SUN-FISH (Orthagoriscus mola).

THE PIPE FISH (Syngnathus acus).THE PIPE FISH (Syngnathus acus).

THE PIPE FISH (Syngnathus acus).

The fifth order,Teleostea, or bony fishes, constitutes a lengthy series. Among it must be placed the globular and phosphorescent sun-fish, the spiny globe-fish, the bony trunk-fish, and the cuirassed pipe-fish, the sea-horse, which has a head not unlike a horse, and floats vertically, the flying-fish, the eels, herrings, salmon, carp, cod, flat-fish, mullets, tunnies, and others too numerous to mention. It is for man’s purposes the most important of all the orders.

THE FLYING-FISH (Exocœtus exiliens.)THE FLYING-FISH (Exocœtus exiliens.)

THE FLYING-FISH (Exocœtus exiliens.)

The flying-fish have been incidentally mentioned before in this work. Captain Basil Hall observed a flight of 200 yards; they have come on board a vessel fourteen or fifteen feet, and into the chains of a line-of-battle ship twenty feet above the water. They are considerably harassed by the attacks of other fish, and when they take to the air often fall victims to gulls and other sea-birds. Sharks and dolphins are their particular enemies. Their glittering, silvery brilliancy is most beautiful in the brightness of tropical seas.

Among the most important bony fishes must certainly be first placed the salmon, which includes three well-known species,Salmo salar(the salmon itself),S. fario(the salmon trout), andS. trutta(the trout). The early life of the salmon is interesting. The infant fry is primarily, of course, very helpless, and during the first two or three weeks of its existence carries about with it, as a provision for food, a portion of the yolk of the egg from which it was hatched. This generally lasts it from twenty to forty days. It is two years before the youngster ventures out to sea. In the first stage the young salmon is called aparr; during the second it is asmolt,i.e., a parr plus a covering of silvery scales. The smolt, which in the course of its two or more years’ stay in the river has only attained a growth of six or eight inches, returns from the sea in a couple of months weighing three or four pounds, and after six months ten or twelve pounds. It is now agrilse.

Dr. Bertram says of the salmon’s growth:—

“The sea-feeding must be favourable, and the condition of the fish well suited to the salt-water to ensure such rapid growth—a rapidity which every visit of the fish to the ocean serves but to confirm. Various fish, whilst in the grilse state, have been marked to prove this; and at every migration they returned to their breeding-stream with added weight and improved health. What the salmon feeds upon whilst in the salt-water is not well known, as the digestion of the fish is so rapid as to prevent the discovery of food in their stomachs when they are captured and opened. Guesses have been made, and it is likely that these approximate to the truth; but the old story of the rapid voyage of the salmon to the North Pole and back again turns out, like the theory upon which was built up the herring migration romance, to be a mere myth.

“None of our naturalists have yet attempted to elucidate that mystery of salmon life which converts one-half of the fish into sea-going smolts, whilst as yet the other moiety remain as parr. It has been investigated so far at the breeding-ponds at Stormontfield, but without resolving the question. There is another point of doubt as to salmon life which I shall also have a word to say about—namely, whether or not that fish makes two visits annually to the sea; likewise, whether it be probable that a smolt remains in the salt water for nearly a year before it becomes a grilse. A salmon only stays, as it is popularly supposed, a very short time in the salt water; and as it is one of the quickest-swimming fishes we have, it is able to reach a distant river in a very short space of time, therefore it is most desirable we should know what it does with itself when it is not migrating from one water to the other; because, according to the opinion of some naturalists, it would speedily become so deteriorated in the river as to be unequal to the slightest exertion....

“At every stage of its career the salmon is surrounded by enemies. At the very moment of spawning, the female is watched by a horde of devourers, who instinctively flock to the breeding-grounds in order to feast on the ova. The hungry pike, the lethargic perch, the greedy trout, the very salmon itself, are lying in wait, all agape for the palatable roe, and greedily swallowing whatever quantity the current carries down. Then the waterfowl eagerly pounces on the precious deposit the moment it has been forsaken by the fish; and if it escape being gobbled up by such cormorants, the spawn[pg 164]may be washed away by a flood, or the position of the bed may be altered, and the ova be destroyed, perhaps for want of water. As an instance of the loss incidental to salmon-spawning in the natural way, I may just mention that a whiting of about three-quarters of a pound weight has been taken in the Tay with three hundred impregnated salmon ova in its stomach! If this fish had been allowed to dine and breakfast at this rate during the whole of the spawning season it would have been difficult to estimate the loss our fisheries would have sustained by his voracity. No sooner do the eggs ripen, and the young fish come to life, than they are exposed, in their defenceless state, to be preyed upon by all the enemies already enumerated; while, as parr, they have been taken out of our streams in such quantities as to be available for the purpose of pig-feeding and manure! Some economists estimate that only one egg out of every thousand becomes a full-sized salmon. Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart calculated that 150,000,000 of salmon ova are annually deposited in the river Tay; of which only 50,000,000, or one-third, come to life and attain the parr stage; that 20,000,000 of these parr become in time smolts, and that their number is ultimately diminished to 100,000; of which 70,000 are caught, the other 30,000 being left for breeding purposes. Sir Humphry Davy calculated that if a salmon produced 17,000 roe, only 800 of these would arrive at maturity. It is well, therefore, that the female fish yields 1,000 eggs for each pound of her weight; for a lesser degree of fecundity, keeping in view the enormous waste of life indicated by these figures, would long since—especially taking into account the destructive modes of fishing that used a few years ago to be in use—have resulted in the extinction of this valuable fish.

“The first person who‘took a thought about the matter’—i.e., as to whether the[pg 165]parr was or was not the young of the salmon—and arrived at a solid conclusion, was James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who, in his usual impulsive way, proceeded to verify his opinions. He had, while herding sheep, many opportunities of watching the fishing streams, and, like most of his class, he wielded his fishing-rod with considerable skill. While angling in the tributaries of some of the Border salmon-streams, he had often caught the parr as it was changing into the smolt, and had, after close observation, come to the conclusion that the little parr was none other than the infant salmon. Mr. Hogg did not keep his discovery a secret, and the more his facts were controverted by the naturalists of the day the louder became his proclamations. He had suspected all his life that parr were salmon in their first stage. He would catch a parr with a few straggling scales upon it; he would look at this fish, and think it queer; instantly he would catch another, a little better covered with silver scales, but all loose, and not adhering to the body. Again, he would catch a smolt, manifestly a smolt, all covered with the white silver scales, yet still rather loose upon the skin, which would come off in his hand. Removing these scales, he found the parr with the blue finger-marks below them, and that the fish were young salmon then became as manifest to the shepherd as that a lamb, if suffered to live, would become a sheep. Wondering at this, he marked a great number of the lesser fish, and offered rewards (characteristically enough, of whisky) to the peasantry to bring him such as had evidently undergone the change predicted by him. When this conclusion was settled in his mind, the Shepherd at once proclaimed his new-gained knowledge.‘What will the fishermen of Scotland think’said he,‘when I assure them, on the faith of long experience and observation, and on the word of one who can have no interest in instilling an untruth into their minds, that every insignificant parr with which the cockney fisher fills his basket is a salmon lost!’These crude attempts of the impulsive Shepherd of Ettrick—and he was hotly opposed by the late Mr. Buist, of Stormontfield—were not without their fruits; indeed, they were so successful as quite to convince him that parr were young salmon in their firststage.”

The following amusing dialogue on the habits of the salmon once took place between the Ettrick Shepherd and a friend:—

“Shepherd:—‘I maintain that ilka saumon comes aye back again frae the sea till spawn in its ain water.’

“Friend:—‘Toots, toots, Jamie! hoo can it manage till do that? Hoo, in the name o’ wonder, can a fish, travelling up a turbid water frae the sea, know when it reaches the entrance to its birthplace, or that it has arrived at the tributary that was its cradle?’

“Shepherd:—‘Man, the great wonder to me is no hoo the fish get back, but hoo they find their way till the sea first ava, seein’ that they’ve never been there afore!’”

The canned salmon, now generally popular in England, and which, though some few years ago an expensive luxury, is now within the reach of all, comes principally from the Columbia River, Oregon, and other parts of the North Pacific coasts. In North-Western America the fish is a perfect drug in the market. In a city like San Francisco it sells for eight cents (4d.) per pound. Higher up the coast a large fish is obtained for a quarter to half a dollar. Further north a piece of tobacco or a few needles will purchase a twenty or thirty pound salmon. They are so abundant that the writer has seen them on the beaches of streams and creeks falling into Frazer River, British Columbia, by the score, bleeding, gasping, and dying, having literally crowded each other out of the water.“Schools”of them are often so densely packed together, that they impede the progress of canoes and boats.

The salmon fisheries of the Columbia, Oregon, itself one of the grandest rivers in the world, give employment to 4,000 men during the season, and nearly all the canned salmon consumed in Europe comes from it.44There are dozens of rivers on the north-west coast equally available, and the business even now is in its infancy; while salted, pickled, or smoked salmon, hardly ever reaches England from there at all. As will appear, there are splendid opportunities on that coast for hundreds of new-comers, it may almost be said with or without capital. It is needless to state that the former is always to be preferred. Where isn’t it?

Some ten or a dozen varieties of salmon and salmon-trout, Mr. Murphy tells us, enter the rivers of North-Western America, but only one is selected for commercial purposes. Two of the most delicate-eating varieties—the silvery-white and spring salmons—are never packed in tins, because their schools are less abundant and the fish themselves smaller. The hook-nosed and dog salmons are rarely eaten, except by Indians; while the man has not yet been discovered who would tackle the hump-back. The blue-back, or weak-toothed salmon, an inferior fish also, is only exported to the Sandwich Islands, where the natives are said to really prefer its lean and fibrous flesh to the more delicately-flavoured and succulent kinds. The salmon principally caught is distinguished by the Indians as the“Tyhee,”or chief; it is abundant, large, and most excellent eating; it possesses those“all-round”qualifications which particularly fit it for commerce and cooking. It is theSalmo quinnatof the naturalists.

The fishery season on the Columbia lasts from the beginning of April to the end of[pg 167]July, and the fisheries extend along the river for a hundred miles or more. Some of the curing establishments employ their own men to tend the nets, while others purchase from fishermen, the price for fish weighing from fifteen to forty pounds ranging from 25 cents to 50 cents (approximately one to two shillings). These prices would seem ridiculously low were it not for the abundance of the fish and the ease with which they are taken. A party of four men may secure from 300 to 2,000 salmon in twenty-four hours! Take the lowest estimate—300 at 25 cents. This gives 75 dollars (or £15) to divide among the four fishermen. But this would be a very poor catch. A thousand fish are no uncommon haul. This at the lowest price paid would give 250 dollars (£50) to be divided. Of course there is the wear and tear of boat and fishing gear to be considered.

Large quantities of the fish are caught in weirs. The Indians, also, knowing that the salmon avoids currents if possible, build out into the river from the shore, for ten or a dozen feet, walls of stone a few inches in height. The salmon crowd into the quieter water caused thereby, and are easily captured in nets or by spearing. They are so numerous in places that the Indian can often flap them out of the water, by a sudden dexterous jerk of his paddle, to his squaw on the beach, who then immediately knocks them on the head and guts them.

At the curing houses, mostly owned by Americans, the labour is chiefly performed by Chinamen under the superintendence of white men.“John”quickly and cleverly guts the fish and cuts off its head; then cuts it into chunks, which are boiled, first in salt and afterwards in fresh water. Next the tins are filled, and soldered down, all but one little hole in their tops. The tins are then immersed in boiling water, and when every particle of air is excluded, a few drops of solder effectually seal them up till wanted for the table. The process is in effect the same employed in the preservation of meats and fruits in tins.

Many British and Irish waterfalls are celebrated for their salmon leaps. In Inverness-shire at Kilmorack, at Ballyshannon in Donegal, and Leixlip near Dublin, in Pembrokeshire and elsewhere, the leaps are noted, and at many of them there are osier baskets placed below to catch the fish when they fail and fall. Sportsmen have even shot them, on the wing as it were, in their leap. At the Falls of Kilmorack“Lord Lovat conceived the idea of placing a furnace and frying-pan on a point of rock overhanging the river. After their unsuccessful effort some of the unfortunate salmon would fall accidentally into the frying-pan. The noble lord could thus boast that the resources of his country were so abundant, that on placing a furnace and frying-pan on the banks of its rivers, the salmon would leap into it of their own accord, without troubling the sportsman to catch them. It is more probable, however, that Lord Lovat knew that the way to enjoy salmon in perfection is to cook it when fresh from the water, and before the richer parts of the fish have ceased to curd.”

In our own land, the Tweed, Tay, Spey, and Severn, are all noted rivers for salmon; the Tay fish sometimes weigh sixty pounds. It is a curious fact that the full-grown salmon never feeds in the rivers.“Juvenile experience on the part of the fish, recurring as a phantasm, causes them to snap at a shining artificial minnow or a gaudy fly, but they never rise out of the water; the bait must dip to them, and when hooked they shake[pg 168]the intruder as a terrier does a rat.”Their superabundant store of fat enables them to live on themselves, as it were, as do the Asiatic and African doomba sheep when avalanches and heavy snow-falls stop their supplies of herbage.45They become much thinner during their stay in fresh water; their colour becomes duller, and their flavour much depreciated. Izaak Walton’s statement that“the further they get from the sea they be both fatter and better”is utterly erroneous, for they fatten only in the sea. In March, 1845, the Duke of Athole took a ten-pound salmon in the Tay after it had spawned, and attached a medal to it and then let it go to sea. The same individual, with its decoration, was fished up five weeks and a few days afterwards, when it had been to the refreshing salt water. It had more than doubled its weight, for it weighed twenty-one pounds.

THE SALMON (Salmo salar).THE SALMON (Salmo salar).

THE SALMON (Salmo salar).

Back to IndexNext