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A parsnip might mature as slowly as an oak and live as long for all I care. There is something, it may be, to be said for parsnips, as there is something, it may be, to be said for Mr Bonar Law. But I do not know it. They do not even tempt the slugs and the leather-jackets away from the lettuces. There is nothing that puzzles one more in a friend than if he confesses to a taste for parsnips.

When we returned to the boat, we found that our people had caught with the seine a great number of small fish, which are well known in the West-Indies, and which our sailors call leather-jackets, because their skin is remarkably thick. I had sent the second lieutenant out in the yawl a-striking, and when we got back to the ship, we found that he also had been very successful.

However, no leather-jackets, wrasse, greedy rock-cod, or keen-eyed trevally being about, the bait touches the sandy bottom, and then you will see one perhaps half a dozen afulu cease poking their noses in the sand, and make for it steadily but cautiously. When within a foot or so, they invariably stop dead, and eye the bait to see if it is worth eating.

We saw, during our visit, a quantity of dried salmon, rock cod, blue dolphins, mackerel, blackfish, skate, conger eels, elephantfish, mullets, soles, parrotfish, leather-jackets, gurnards, hake, flounders, paracutas, and innumerable other varieties.

That finished, we lit our pipes and settled down to work again. Alas! a swarm of ugly brown and yellow 'leather-jackets' had arrived on the scene, and before our lines could touch bottom the brutes would either take the bait, or bite off the hook snoozings with their keen, rat-like teeth.

The French once caught near two thousand fish in one day, of a species of grouper, to which, from the form of a bone in the head resembling a helmet, we have given the name of light horseman. To this may be added bass, mullets, skait, soles, leather-jackets, and many other species, all so good in their kind, as to double our regret at their not being more numerous.

As soon as I caught sight of one or more of the sought-for fish, I would cease paddling, and bait my hook; and first carefully looking to see if there were any predatory leather-jackets or many-coloured wrasse in sight, would lower away, the hook soon touching the bottom, as I always used a small sinker of coral stone.

In all I think that we carried back to the village quite five hundredweight of fish, some of which were very large: the weight of three of the large banded leather-jackets I estimated at fifty pounds.

The potato has a variety of names, such as leather-jackets, blue-eyes, and red-eyes. A pretty name in Devonshire for the Veronica chamcaedrys is angel's-eyes: "Around her hat a wreath was twined Of blossoms, blue as southern skies; I asked their name, and she replied, We call them angel's-eyes." In the northern counties the poplar, on account of its bitter bark, was termed the bitter-weed.

No leather-jackets appeared to disturb our pleasure, and not even the usual murderous shark showed his ugly face, and played the usual game of seizing every schnapper as it was hauled up, and biting it in halves. Only the previous week half a dozen had followed us about from ground to ground, breaking our lines, and taking five out of every ten fish we hooked.