A LIVING FISHING LINE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5551, 13 January 1879, Page 3

A LIVING FISHING LINE.

(From the “Popular Educator.”) Down amongst the seaweed stems and pointed rocks wo perceive a long, black, tangled string, like a giant’s leather boot-lace set to soak. Let us trace it in its various folds and twists, and disentangle some of it ; we shall then have a tough, slippery, india-rubber-like substance, which might well be pronounced a sea-string, and classed with the long trailing weeds amongst which we have found it.

A sea string it is, but not a weed; iu fact, a living lasso, capable of consuming the prey it encloses within its treacherous folds. From twenty to thirty feet is no uncommon length for this artful animated fishing line to reach, but its diameter rarely exceeds an eighth of an inch. It has a mouth, however, capable of considerable distension and holding power. What can appear more innocent than this delicate-looking creeper, trailing here and there as the heaving water wells and flows as the tide comes in? Let an unwary tubedweller, lulled into a false security, stretch forth its tentacles to meet the welcome wave, and a pointed head is adroitly insinuated. The mouth effects the tenacious grasp on the yielding tissues, and the tenant of the tube becomes food for the Nemertes Borlassi, for such is the name of this cord-like freebooter.

Mr. Kingsley appears to have taken more than ordinary interest in the habits of this strange creature. Speaking of xt, he inquires motionless, a mere velvet string, across the hand. Ask the neighboring annelids, aud the fry of the rock fishes ; or put it in a vase at home, aud see. It lies motionless, trailing itself among the gravel. You tell where it begins or ends. It may be a strip of dead sea-weed — IHniauthalla loroa , perhaps, or Chorda filum —or even a tarred string. So thinks the little fish who plays over and over it, till he touches at last what is too surely a head. In an instant a bell shaped sucker rnautli has fastened to its side ; in another instant, from one lip a concave double proboscis, just like a tapir’s (another instance of the repetition of forms), has clasped hixii like "a linger. “ And now begins the struggle : but xxx vain. He is being ‘ played ’ with such a fishing-rod as the skill of a Wilson or a Stoddart never could invent, a living line, ivith elasticity beyond that of the most delica;e fly-rod, which follows every lunge, shortenirg and lengthening, slipping and twisting round every piece of gravel and stem of seaweed with a tiring drag such as no Highland wrist or step could ever bring to hear on the salmon or trout. The victim is tired new, and slowly yet dexterously his blind assailant is feeling and shifting along his side till he reaches one end of him ; and then the black lips expand, and slowly and surely the curved finger begins packing him head foremost down into the gullet, where he sinks inch by inch, till the swelling which marks his place is lost among the coils, and he is probably macerated into a pulp long before he has- reached the opposite extremity. Once safe down, tire black murderer contracts into a knotted heap, and lies like a boa with a stag inside him, motionless and blest.” ■ .