Peas

“ In using green peas in summer time it is well to have a quantity of them, perhaps twice as many as you are likely to use for one meal, and shell them, because you know they are of different sizes always. ”

“ Peas, Dried Whole, Green.—This is perhaps the best form with which we meet peas dried. When the best quality is selected, and care taken in their preparation, they are quite equal to fresh green peas when they are old. Indeed, many persons prefer them. ”

“ The advantages which will be derived are, that the peas will not be drawn up so much, be stronger, will flower much nearer to the ground, and in wet weather can be more easily gathered without wetting you. ”

“ Soak the peas overnight, throwing away those that float at the top; put them into cold water, and when they boil let the peas simmer gently till they are tender. The time varies very much with the quality and the size of the peas, old ones requiring nearly three hours, others considerably less. ”

“ A monkey was carrying two handfuls of peas. One little pea dropped out. He tried to pick it up, and spilt twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and spilt them all. Then he lost his temper, scattered the peas in all directions, and ran away. ”

“ And by and by we reach the sea, and there we find masses of tangled seaweed, the plants of the salt water, while all along the shores myriads of living creatures are left by the receding tide. In the rocky pools we find active life busily at work. Thousands of tiny acorn shells, scarcely larger than the head of a good-sized pin, cover the rocks and fling out their thread-like arms in search of food. ”

“ His food was chiefly the very tiny creatures of the sea, shell-fish from the deep-covered rocks and floating masses of weed, young fry swimming in schools, jellyfish of various sorts, and the myriad minute sea things which made certain belts and patches of the sea, at times, almost like a kind of soup ready to his eager palate. Ever north and north swam the silver host, seeking those cold currents from the pole which are as thick with life as the lands they wash are lifeless. ”

“ The ambrosial rain which comes out of the cloud, and the ambrosial dew, are the water in which the fish is washed, and the ambrosial dew is the water or seed of the fish; the fair-haired and silvery moon in the ocean of night is the little gold fish, and the little silver fish which announces the rainy season, the autumn, the deluge. ”

“ Out of the clay God made men, and out of the coming mud He will mould a new order. When the flat-fish are in the deep sea they have their deep-sea flavour. When they come into our creek their flesh assimilates itself to the flavour of our slime. ”

“ Now we come to the real use of sea plants. They are food for all the hosts of small animals of the sea. These eat it as it grows; or else, like the mussel and oyster, swallow the tiny scraps of it which float everywhere like so much dust.
The shell-fish, and other animals which feed on sea plants, are themselves eaten by other sea creatures, and these in their turn are eaten by crabs, lobsters and fish, which are eaten by us. It reminds you of a chain. The first link in the chain is the sea plant, the last links are the fish and ourselves. ”

“ LOBSTER.—This fish, which is continually before our eyes, and only looked upon as an article of food, is, without doubt, one of the wonders of the creation. A creature destitute of bones, yet furnished with a stomach capable of digesting the hardest substances, even its own shell, which it doffs once a year, when it is too small for it; without blood circulating through its body, yet strong and active. ”

“ The water beneath me was clear as crystal; and, gazing into its depths and shallows, I perceived beds of shell-fish, like large oysters, attached to the rocks and to each other by tufts of hairy filaments. ”

“ So, at length, the basin is formed, tiny at first;—I know scores not so big as a slop-bowl, which yet have their furniture of elegant little sea-weeds, green and purple, and their tenants of worms, and shrimps, and polyps;—but destined by-and-by to become noble reservoirs in which man may pleasantly bathe, and in which little fishes play and shoot to and fro, and hide under the umbrageous fronds of the oar-weed and tangle that droop gracefully into the ample cavity. ”

“ Fish, vegetables, cheese, fruit and nuts seem to be their chief delights. Fish of every imaginable kind may be seen on Christian street. Some of them, small, flattened, silver-shining things, are packed cunningly in kegs in a curious concentric pattern so that the glitter of their perished eyes gleams in hypnotizing circles. ”

“ The lover of fishy beauty is abundantly gratified by the multitudes of fish of brilliant colors, together with large medusae, which dart or glide through the sunlit waters among the coral-groves, where every coral spray is gemmed with zoophytes, whose rainbow-tinted arms sway with the undulations of the water, and where sea-snakes writhe themselves away into the recesses of coral caves. ”

“ Thousands of purple sea-urchins, squid, hundred-fingered star-fish, and all manner of slimy sea delicacies, these slant-eyed Orientals draw up out of the rainbow rock pools and the deeps below the receding surf. ”

“ There will be shoals of fish, too, playing in and out, as strange and gaudy as the rest,—parrot-fish who browse on the live coral with their beak-like teeth, as cattle browse on grass; and at the bottom, it may be, larger and uglier fish, who eat the crabs and shell-fish, shells and all, grinding them up as a dog grinds a bone, and so turning shells and corals into fine soft mud, such as this stone is partly made of. ”

“ But of those which live wholly in rivers and lakes, the river fish are the best; for the water of lakes is more apt to putrefy. And, again, of river fish those are the best which are found in the most rapid rivers; and especially the trout; for those are never found except where the river is rapid and cold, and they are far superior to all other river fish in their digestible properties. ”

“ If you go down among the rocks when the tide is out, and look into the shallow pools which have been left among them by the retreating waves, you are quite sure to see numbers of shadowy forms darting to and fro through the water. A good many of these will be prawns, and if you catch one or two of them in a small net, and examine them carefully, you will find [84] that they are very much like tiny lobsters. Indeed, if you could magnify a prawn to the size of a lobster, or reduce a lobster to the size of a prawn, it really would not be very easy to tell the one from the other. ”

“ I have had an opportunity elsewhere of observing a curious change which fresh water induces in this fish. In the brackish water of an estuary, the animal becomes, without diminishing in general size, thicker and more fleshy than when in its legitimate habitat, the sea: but the flesh loses in quality what it gains in quantity;—it grows flabby and insipid, and the margin-fin lacks always its strip of transparent fat. ”

“ In September, 1900, this latter fish kept alive for about ten days my party of six men and twenty-three clogs. It is undoubtedly the finest fish food to be found anywhere, in color a pale pink, like salmon or unripe watermelon. Living in water never warmer than forty degrees, perhaps never above thirty-five degrees, it is the sweetest, firmest fish fiber in the world. ”

“ The seeds of the life of fishes are every where disseminated, whether the winds waft them, or the waters float them, or the deep earth holds them; wherever a pond is dug, straightway it is stocked with this vivacious race. They have a lease of nature, and it is not yet out. ”

“ Fish as brilliant as hummingbirds—red, blue, metallic-green, and orange—peep knowingly in and out of the branches of this strange submarine vegetation, which is crossed and recrossed in all directions by pathways of sparkling, silver gravel. ”

“ You would think you were at the seaside from the smell, for there are great lumps of seaweed lying about among the fish on the slabs, and they bring the breath of the sea with them. Here is a crawling pile of black lobsters; they are alive, and they turn bright-red when they have been boiled. ”

“ There are a few kinds of fish, like the salmon and shad, which live in the ocean but lay their eggs in rivers, and these are able to endure the change from the one kind of water to the other without being destroyed. ”

“ Fish, which are generally suspended in water, and swallows, which are generally suspended in air, have their backs the colour of the distant ground, and their bellies of the sky. In the colder climates many of these become white during the existence of the snows. Hence there is apparent design in the colours of animals, whilst those of vegetables seem consequent to the other properties of the materials which possess them. ”

“ In the stomach there is generally found an enormous quantity of the leaves of plants growing on the banks of rivers, evidently eaten after they had fallen into the water and when in a decomposing condition. The flesh of the fish is salmon-coloured, and much esteemed as food. ”

“ The marshy parts are overgrown with aquatic plants,—a circumstance which must tend, in time, to raise their level, although the ebb and flow are continually shaking and tossing them, and leave no rest to the vegetation.
I now return with my narrative once more to the sea. I there saw yesterday the haunts of the sea-snails, the limpets, and the crab, and was highly delighted with the sight. What a precious glorious object is a living thing! ”

“ A white fish, however, lying on yellow sand or brown mud, would be very easily seen, and some hungry creature would be sure to catch sight of it and devour it. So as soon as the little fish lies down the upper side begins to get darker, and in a very short time it is of just the same colour as the sand or mud all round it. If you look into a shallow pool in which some of these fishes are lying you will find it very difficult indeed to see them, for they look exactly like the surface on which they rest. ”

“ Not only fish but almost everything that comes out of the Sea is Eat and Esteem'd by these People; Shell Fish, Lobsters, Crabs, and even sea insects, and what is commonly called blubbers of many kinds, conduce to their support. ”

“ Of fresh-water Fishes, some inhabit large rivers, others small streams; rapid and sluggish waters have each charms for some: great inland lakes possess peculiar species, and some are found only in the deep ponds, or tarns, of mountain districts. ”

“ After various transformations and subdivisions these bodies develop into the wonderfully beautiful and fairy-like jelly-fish which you find swimming in the deep waters of the bay, some of them trailing long, filmy, lace-like skirts or veils as they move.
The delicate red, green, yellow, pink, and lavender blossoms, which add so much to the beauty of the pool, are
Sea-anemones Animals, too, every one, living only on animal food, which they find and absorb in a peculiar manner. ”

“ The bed of the seas is alive with polypes, crabs, star-fishes, and with sand-numerous shell-animalcules. The rugged face of rocks is scarred by the silent boring of soft creatures; and blackened with countless mussels, barnacles, and limpets. ”

“ Green sea-weed was put down to represent grass, the most wonderful arrangements in the way of cockles, mussels, and limpets took the place of flower-beds, and a few sea-pinks and harebells planted in tins rescued from the sand-bank adorned the window-sill. ”

“ Fish—raw or cooked—is the staple food of the inhabitants, and almost everybody we saw had half-a-dozen or more brilliant members of the finny tribe, wrapped up in fresh green banana leaves, ready to carry home. Shrimps are abundant and good. ”

“ Their food principally consists of fish, which they spear in shallow places, as they never venture above the knees in water, with their own will; and it is a strange and singular fact, that none of them swim. ”

“ It will surprise many who picture him as a mere dreamy decadent, to be told that he is a man of abiding and abundant cheerfulness, who finds happiness in the simplest of things. The scent of a flower, the flight of sea-gulls around a cliff, a cornfield in sunshine—these stir him to strange delight. A deed of bravery, nobility, or of simple devotion; a mere brotherly act of kindness, the unconscious sacrifice of the peasant who toils all day to feed and clothe his children—these awake his warm and instant sympathy. ”

“ But the plaice which are caught in this way are always quite small ones, for the bigger fish, which sometimes weigh as much as twelve or even fifteen pounds, live in the deeper water at some little distance from the shore. ”

“ The signs that fish are fresh are the firmness or stiffness of the fish, the redness of its gills, and the brightness of the eyes. Whiteness of muscle and the absence of oiliness and viscidity are also signs of wholesomeness of this species of food. ”

“ Fish inhabit all kinds of water, the sea, rivers, and ponds, and many which live habitually in the sea come into rivers at certain seasons; and with respect to those which dwell always in the sea, some inhabit certain tracts only, and confine themselves to them, just as quadrupeds do to certain localities on the land. ”

“ The lake fish, which prefer the clearer element near rocky shoals, have a small head and reddish eye, are dark-sided and vigorous, have a large forked tail, and are infinitely preferable on the table. ”

“ The enclosures in which fish brought in by the tide are retained, the beds of reeds and rushes with yellow water-lilies, the figures of women and children wading and seeking fishy treasures, provide excellent material for the artist. ”

“ Shell-fish are also no mean item, and are sometimes the most refreshing of all dishes, especially at the supper-table. Now the sea, it must be remembered, does all this for man without harrowing, ploughing, or sowing. ”