PILCHARD. 81 



at that season. Large numbers have then gone beyond the 

 reach of the longest Imes; for they are seen to rise to the 

 surface when the season changes, at a still more considerable 

 distance west or south of the Sciliy Islands. But such seclusion 

 is not always sought; and it is in our notes that schools (in 

 one instance believed to contain a thousand hogsheads) have 

 come within the reach of drift-nets, and even of scans, in 

 January, February, and March. Usually, however, at this 

 season they are more scattered, or in smaller companies, and 

 it is supposed that their subordinate motions are by drawing 

 nearer the land by day, and passing into deeper water at 

 night. The reason of these occasional early assemblages may 

 be that the time of spawning in the spring has become per- 

 manently early, for it is far from an unusual occurrence that 

 many sorts of fishes shall anticipate or delay the more ordinary 

 seasons of their race; but in April and May they are habitually 

 prepared to shed their spawn, which they now do at a further 

 distance from land, and over deeper water than is the case at 

 the warmer season of autumn, when again, early or later, they 

 perform the same function, although we do not feel assured 

 that they are the same fishes which thus perform the duty of 

 procreation on both occasions. The number of males usually 

 exceeds that of females, and sometimes they do so to a large 

 extent; but mingled with them are many that have no en- 

 largement of the milt or roe, and some also which appear to 

 be of both sexes united. 



I have reason to suj^pose that the spawn is shed at the 

 surface, and mingled with it a large quantity of tenacious 

 mucus, in which it is kept fioating while it is obtaining the 

 vivifying influence of the light and warmth of the sun, by the 

 influence of which the development is considerably hastened, 

 as we know to be the case with many other kinds of fish. 

 My notes on this subject are, that presently after spawning, a 

 sheet of jelly, enclosing myriads of enlarging grains of spawn, 

 has been seen to extend several miles in length, and a mile 

 or more in breadth, over the surface of the sea, and which 

 has been of the thickness of brown paper, and so tough as 

 not to be readily torn in pieces. In about a couple of days 

 this connecting mucus became decomposed, and the ova then 

 sunk to the bottom of the vessel in which they had been 

 VOL. IV. M 



