Before leaving the crabs and lobsters, it is worthy of remark that an experienced dealer can tell at once the locality whence any particular lobster is obtained—whether from the west of Ireland, the Orkney Islands, or the coast of Brittany. The shelly inhabitants of different localities are distinctly marked. Indeed fish are peculiarly local in their habits, although the vulgar idea has hitherto been that all kinds of sea animals herd indiscriminately together; that the crab and the lobster crept about the bottom rocks, whilst the waving skate or the swaggering lingfish dashed about in mid-water, the prowling “dogs” busily preying on the shoals of herring supposed to be swimming near; the brilliant shrimp flashing through the crowd like a meteor, the elegant saithe keeping them company; the whole being overshadowed by a few whales, and kept in awe by a dozen or so of sharks! Nothing can be more different than the reality of the water-world, which is colonised quite as systematically as the earth. Particular shoals of herring, for instance, gather off particular counties; the Lochfyne herring, as I have mentioned in the account of the herring-fishery, differs from the herring of the Caithness coast or that of the Firth of Forth; and any ’cute fishmonger can tell a Tweed salmon from a Tay one. The herring at certain periods move in gigantic shoals, the chief members of the Gadidæ congregate on vast sandbanks, and the whales occasionally roam about in schools; while the Pleuronectidæ occupy sandy places in the bottom of the sea. We have all heard of the great cod-banks of Newfoundland, of the fish community at Rockall; then is there not the Nymph Bank, near Dublin, celebrated for its haddocks? have we not also the Faroe fishing-ground, the Dogger Bank, and other places with a numerous fish population? There are wonderful diversities of life in the bosom of the deep; and there is beautiful scenery of hill and plain, vegetable and rock, and mountain and valley. There are shallows and depths suited to different aspects of life, and there is life of all kinds teeming in that mighty world of waters, and the fishes live “A cold sweet silver life, wrapped in round waves, Quickened with touches of transporting fear.”