A Year at the Shore

by Philip Henry Gosse

What is this writhing, wriggling thing, that looks like a narrow tape of burnished silver? It is a Sand-launce,[57] and very slyly is it endeavouring to make its way down to the rippling edge of the wave, to liberty and life. But not so fast, pretty Launce! we want to have a look at you, and to introduce you to a very jolly set in our aquarium at home. Now don’t flounce and dart round the jar so angrily: you can’t get out, and may as well be philosophic.

Do you see the remarkable projection of the lower jaws? With that sort of spade the little silvery fish manages to scoop out a bed for itself very quickly in the wet sand, and so lie hid. It is numerous enough in these bays, and it is in request among fishermen, who use it largely as bait, and who, to obtain it, cast a seine, and enclose vast multitudes, which are thus dragged up on the beach high and dry.

A short time ago I saw a paragraph in the Times, from some Jersey correspondent, who complained of the recent scarcity of fish, and accounted for it by the following curious catenation of links. A number of sharks had recently appeared in the offing, which frightened away the shoals of porpesses, which ordinarily came to feed on the fishes, which fed on the Sand-launce. Now when the porpesses were there the fishes were driven with the Launce into the shallows, and were readily taken; but, on being relieved of these persecutors by the intruding sharks, were free to retire to the deeper water, where the fishers could less easily entrap them. The writer stated, however, that at length the sharks had departed, the porpesses had returned, the fishes were consequently driven in shore, and were again devouring the Launce. The whole account has something of the “House that Jack built” twang, and I do not quite pin my faith on the philosophy of the explanation.

LAUNCE IN THE TANK.

Be that as it may, I can vouch for the Launce making a very attractive tenant of an aquarium, where it will live a considerable time. The pearly gleams of lustre from its sides are very beautiful, and such as no pictorial art can reproduce.

V.
MAY.

We are far from having exhausted the treasures of the teeming sands. Another visit to their broad expanse may yield other objects of interest not inferior to those we lately discovered there. Let us, then, seek the shore, where our humble friend the shrimper, with his wading horse, under the guidance of his shrill-voiced little son, still pursues his indefatigable calling.

Again the keer-drag is drawn up the tawny beach, the bag is untied, and the sparkling, crawling, jumping heap spreads itself over the sand, beyond the limits of the insufficient cloth.