surface of
the sponge, which a pinch of carmine dust reveals so beautifully. From the
deeper aquatic gardens come up great orange and yellow sponges, two and
three feet in length, and around the bases of these the weird serpent
stars are clinging, while crabs scurry away as the mass reaches the
surface of the water.

Treasures from depths of forty and even fifty fathoms can be obtained when
a trip is taken with the trawl-men. One can sit fascinated for hours,
watching the hundreds of yards of line reel in, with some interesting
creature on each of the thirty-seven hundred odd hooks. At times a glance
down into the clear water will show a score of fish in sight at once,
hake, haddock, cod, halibut, dog-fish, and perhaps an immense "barndoor"
skate, a yard or more square. This latter hold back with frantic flaps of
its great "wings," and tax all the strength of the sturdy Acadian
fishermen to pull it to the gunwale.

Now and then a huge "meat-rock," the fishermen's apt name for an anemone,
comes up, impaled on a hook, and still clinging to a stone of five to ten
pounds weight. These gigantic scarlet ones from full fifty fathoms far
surpass any near shore. Occasionally the head alone of a large fish will
appear, with the entire body bitten clean off, a hint of the monsters
which must haunt the lower depths. The pressure of the air must be
excessive, for many of the fishes have their swimming bladders fairly
forced out of their mouths by the lessening of atmospheric pressure as
they are drawn to the surface. When a basket starfish finds one of the
baits in that sunless void far beneath our boat, he hugs it so tenaciously
that the upward jerks of the reel only make him hold the more tightly.

Once in a great while the fishermen find what they call a "knob-fish" on
one of their hooks, and I never knew what they meant until one day a small
colony of five was brought ashore. _Boltenia_, the scientists call them,
tall, queer-shaped things; a stalk six to eight inches in length, with a
knob or oblong bulb-like body at the summit, looking exactly like the
flower of a lady-slipper orchid and as delicately coloured. This is a
member of that curious family of Ascidians, which forever trembles in the
balance between the higher backboned animals and the lower division, where
are classified the humbler insects, crabs, and snails. The young of
_Boltenia_ promises everything in its tiny backbone or notochord, but it
all ends in promise,