However unproductive the herring fishing season may be quoad herrings, and this has so far been the worst of a series of bad seasons [September 1870], it rarely fails to provide more or less grist for our mill in the shape of some rarity in marine life worth chronicling. A very ugly and repulsive-looking fish, extremely rare too, was sent us recently for identification. It was caught in Sallachan Bay, in our neighbourhood, having become entangled in the corner of a drift net which the fishermen were hauling into their boat in the grey morning, after a long, wearisome, and profitless night's labours. We had seen the fish before, though not often, and had therefore no hesitation in recognising it as the Chimæra monstrosa--a scientific name, by the way in which its lack of beauty is plainly enough indicated--a cartilaginous fish, two feet in length, and of somewhat elongated and hake-like form. The general colour is a dull leaden white, mottled on the under parts with small spots of rusty brown. On examining the contents of the stomach, they were found to consist of some very small herring fry, along with partly digested fragments of the adult fish, whence it may be concluded that the Chimæra's favourite prey, when they can be had, is herring; a conclusion at which we might also easily arrive from the fact that it is seldom or never met with on our shores, except when herring are more or less plentiful. At one time the Chimæra must have been a less rare fish than it is now, for it has a Gaelic name, "Buachaille-an-Sgadain," the Herring Herd or Herdsman. It was probably comparatively common in the good old times, when even our more inland western lochs swarmed annually with herring shoals, and so large was the capture, that the salt to cure them, on which there was a considerable duty at the time, was frequently retailed over a vessel's side at a shilling the lippy. The late Colonel Maclean of Ardgour, who attained a great age, with intellect clear and unimpaired, and who was most particular and exact in all his statistics, has repeatedly assured us that, in his younger days, say a hundred years ago, fifty thousand pounds worth of herring used to be captured annually in Lochiel alone. We don't suppose that for many years past herring to the value of a tenth of that sum have been caught in all the lochs between the Mull of Cantyre and the Point of Ardnamurchan.