MACKEREL AND SUNSHINE. 397 



recorded at the three meteorological stations, Plymouth, Falmouth, and 

 Scilly. Although the extreme closeness of the agreement between 

 the two curves may be due to chance, it seems scarcely possible to 

 doubt that they indicate a fundamental correlation between the 

 abundance of mackerel in May and the amount of bright sunshine 

 during the earlier months of the year. The sunshine curve, it should 

 be added, has practically the same shape, whether it is taken for the 

 three stations chosen, or for the whole south-western district of 

 England, which includes inland stations, or for the south-west of 

 England and south Ireland combined. The figures on which the 

 sunshine curve is based will be found in Table III. 



In Fig. 2 the continuous line gives the total number of cwts. of 

 mackerel landed on the south and west coasts of England and Wales 

 in May* for each of the years from 1886-1908, as given by the 

 official statistics of the Board of Trade and Board of Agriculture and 

 Fisheries (see Table IV.), whilst the dotted line gives the average 

 number of hours bright sunshine recorded for the south-west of 

 England and - bouth Ireland for the first quarter of the year ( Jan.- 

 March), as given in the reports of the Meteorological Office (see Table 

 v.). As already pointed out, the official figures of mackerel landed 

 take no account of the number of boats fishing, and those taken during 

 the first four or five years are known to be very imperfect and should 

 therefore be neglected. It is practically certain that the fishing power 

 has increased during the years for which the records are given, more 

 especially since the introduction of steam drifting about 1902. 

 Comparing the two curves in Fig. 2 generally, and bearing in mind the 

 above limitations, there is, I think, sufficient similarity in the way in 

 which they rise and fall together to justify us in regarding them as in 

 no way contradicting the very definite agreement shown between 

 Messrs. Peacock's figures and the sunshine curve as seen in Fig. 1. 



Considering in x ore detail the years 1902-1908, it will be seen 

 that the most striking difference between the curve given by the official 

 figures and that representing the averages for Messrs. Peacock's boats is 

 the great drop wb''.'h the official figures show in 1906. A similar 

 though less marked drop in 1906 is also shown by the curve given in 

 Fig. 3, which represents the average number of " hundreds " of mackerel 

 landed by Messrs. Peacock's three sailing drifters. A reference to the 

 figure given by Bullen {loc. cit., p. 279, Fig. 1) also shows a minimum in 

 1906 for the Copepods taken at the International Stations E.5. and 

 E.6. The high figure for 1906 given by the three steam drifters, 

 although it agrees with the high February and March sunshine for that 

 * Most of the fish are landed at Newlyii and Milford Haven. 



