One luxury which we enjoyed at Poyston was an abundance of excellent fish, with which the old fisherman supplied us twice or thrice a week, to our mutual advantage, for he had few good customers besides, and the impossibility of obtaining even tolerably good meat or poultry rendered the addition of fish to our bill of fare a great acquisition. Excellent flounders (of a much better kind than I remember at Home,) a few soles and guard-fish, plenty of fine bream, and quantities of flat-heads, composed the general assortment, which now and then included a few oysters, but not any crayfish.

Mr. Meredith and George often went out fishing in our own nice little boat, the “Sea Egg,” but they seldom found wind, and tide, and time, and all other marine influences so propitious as to do much injury to old Donald's trade, a few flat-heads or blue-heads, or a young shark, being their usual booty.

The blue-head is among fish what the rose-hill parakeet is among birds, a miracle of gay colours. It is a large thick fish, with patches of the most vivid blue and orange about the head, and touches of crimson, green, &c., in other parts. It is not very good eating, being, when cooked, almost as soft and watery as mashed turnips.