74 THE REV. F. R. WHEELER, M.A., 
When the evening has closed in, and the tide is low, they pro- 
ceed to take up the fish. or this purpose, leaving the stop 
sean untouched, the volyer passes within it, and lays the tuck 
sean round it on the inner side. The tuck sean is then drawn 
together, so as gradually to contract the limits of the fish and 
raise them from the bottom. When disturbed they become ex- 
ceedingly agitated, and so great is the force derived from their 
numbers and fear, that the utmost caution is used lest the net 
should either sink or burst. While the tuck sean is thus grad- 
ually contracting, and the boats surround if, stones suspended 
from ropes are repeatedly plunged into the water at that part 
where escape alone is practicable, until the fish then to be taken 
up are supported in the hollow or bunt of the sean. When the 
fish are brought to the surface, the voices of the men are lost in 
the noise made by the fish as they leave the water. The seaners 
fix themselves in pairs on the gunwales of the boats, with bas- 
kets, to lade the fish on board. When the quantity enclosed in 
the stop sean is large, the tuck sean is made to enclose no more 
than the boats can carry. The whole can thus be salted in pro- 
per condition, without fatigue or expense; thus a week may 
elapse, possibly, before the whole of the capture is secured, part 
being taken up every night. 
Many years ago, the capital directly invested in the pilchard 
fishery was estimated at nearly half a million of money. The 
outfit of a sean amounts to £800. A string of drift nets will 
cost £6 a net, and the boat from £100 to £150. The boats are 
worked on shares; the produce being divided into eight parts— 
the boat has one, the nets three, the men four. An instance has 
been known of 40,000 hogsheads being taken into port in one 
day. About 3,500 pilchards go to a hogshead; and thus 
twenty-five millions of living creatures have been drawn at once 
from the ocean for human sustenance. | 
Pilchards are chiefly exported. The great market for them 
being the Roman Catholic countries around the Mediterranean, 
and Spain. The average number of hogsheads exported is about 
twenty-five thousand or rather more, or from eighty to ninety 
millions of fish. 
