The man is civil and communicative, and lets us into the whole secret;
though now indeed that we are on the spot, it is sufficiently patent.
The horse draws behind him an implement called a keer-drag; a net,
which is stretched upon an oblong iron frame, that forms its mouth.
Behind, the net tapers to a point, but is left open there in the
making, and only tied with a string. The iron frame keeps the net-mouth
open, and being attached by a bridle to a rope, which is fastened to
the horse’s harness, scrapes the sea-bottom as he proceeds; whatever is
collected passing into the net, and accumulating at the narrow point.
Now the shallows just here are alive with swarms of another edible
species of crustacea, the Shrimp,[52] _par excellence_; or, as the
people here say, the sand shrimp, to distinguish it from the prawn,
which, as I have observed, they call the rock shrimp. And this sand
shrimp finds a ready sale in the Torquay market; the fisherman getting,
as he tells us, a shilling a quart from the fishmongers.
The horse, doubtless nothing loath, for his toil must be great, wading
on soft sand in three feet of water, and dragging that heavy apparatus
behind him, walks to dry land, where, as soon as the keer-drag is
ashore, the man seizes it, cries “whow!” to the obedient animal, and,
having spread a cloth on the sand, proceeds to untie the string, and
pour out on the cloth the struggling contents. “It is a very good
haul,” says the fellow; “there’s more nor two quart there!” So, being
in a good humour, and naturally civil besides, we venture to propound a
bargain; that, for a small coin of the realm, we may be allowed to pick
out all the “rubbish;” _i.e._, everything that is not a shrimp, and
convey it to our own private reservoirs; a pleasant agreement for both
parties; for the net gathers many curious creatures of great interest
to the naturalist, though of no value whatever to the fisherman.
Shrimps, however, are the staple; there are probably a hundred of these
to one of all other kinds, lumping these latter all together. And very
fine these shrimps are. Mr. Bell gives two inches and a half as the
total length of the species,[53] and I do not remember that I ever
before saw one that exceeded that size: but here, the great majority
are upwards of three inches; and a very considerable number are full
three and a half. They are mostly females loaded with spawn, which they
carry entangled among the false feet beneath the body.