FOOD AND FISHING 387 



Mediterranean, or the widely-diffused herring, nothing 

 comes amiss. Whilst giving preference to a fish six or 

 seven inches long, a hungry Gannet will readily take any- 

 thing up to a foot in length, and I have seen disgorged 

 fish of that size lying in their nests. But Gannets are also 

 not above seizing small fry of only an inch or two, not by 

 plunging, but by gulping them up while swimming, of 

 which an instance has been given already.* 



There used to be some animosity towards the Gannet on 

 the part of the fishermen of Cornwall, where the pilchard 

 fishery has long been a very important industry — an 

 animosity which in the seventeenth century found expres- 

 sion in the pages of Richard Carew, the Cornish historian, 

 who, after mentioning the dog-fish, tunnys and hakes, by 

 which pilchards are pursued and devoured, adds "... 

 certaine birds called Gannets, soare over, and stoup to 

 prey upon them."t Like Carew, the Essex naturalist 

 John Ray, who made a journey to Cornwall in 1662, did 

 not receive a favourable report of the Gannet, of which 

 in his journal he remarks : — " We saw many of those 

 birds which they call gannets, .... He preys upon 

 pilchards, the shoals whereof great multitudes of these 

 fowls constantly pursue. "{ Nowadays fishermen in 



* See p. 104. 



t " Survey of Cornwall," 1602 (Ed. 1769, p. 34). 



X " Memorials of Jolui Ray," p. 188. 



B B 2 



