Disturbed Ireland : $b being the letters written during the winter of 1880-81Becker, Bernard H. (Bernard Henry)
History
Disturbed Ireland : $b being the letters written during the winter of 1880-81
Becker, Bernard H. (Bernard Henry)
Ireland -- Social conditions; Working class -- Ireland
The story of Mr. Bland's tame fish, which "sat up, and followed him
about like a dog," turns out to have had some foundation in fact.
There is a fine pool of salt water at Derryquin (Ang. "Oakslope")
Castle, which stands on the edge of Kenmare Bay; and this pool not
long since held a number of tame fish, which came to be fed when
anybody approached, just as carp do in many well-known places.
Unluckily, however, a neighbouring otter found this out, and carried
away the unfortunate fish at the rate of two every night till not a
single fish is left. I hear that both salmon and pollock became
equally tame, but that the former, although eating everything offered
them, became miserably poor in a comparatively short time. The only
denizen of the pool that I actually saw was a lobster, who came out
from under a stone as I approached, in the hope, I was told, that I
was going to give him a mussel.
Mr. Bland, however, if he has not proved so redoubtable a fishtamer as
my original informant opined, has proved very successful in oyster
culture. Having a little salt-water inlet, with a river running into
it, he conceived the idea of breeding and raising oysters, but found
the climate bad for "spatting," and now buys his tiny young oysters by
the ten thousand at the Isle of Rhe, and puts them down in long
perforated boxes on his oyster beds. When they are between three and
four years old he consigns them to a correspondent at Ballyvaughan,
who puts them in, I believe, deep-sea oyster beds for a while and
converts them into the famous Burren oysters, which, like the Marenne
oysters, are generally preferred by Englishmen to "Natives," while the
"spat" of the latter is eagerly sought by the French for development
into Huitres d'Ostende.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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