ON THE ECONOMICAL USES OP PISHES. 191 



of fish. The mixture of oil, blood, and pickle, 

 which exudes from the immense heaps into which 

 the fish are piled before imdergoing the process of 

 pickling, is used in large quantity in the neighbour- 

 hood as manure. The fish itself, when very abun- 

 dant, is sometimes used for the same purpose, though 

 not to the same extent as the next species to be 

 mentioned. It is said that a single pilchard is suffi- 

 cient to manure a square foot of land. 



Besides furnishing fresh food for the poorer classes 

 in the neighbourhood, pilchards are exported, it is 

 said, to the annual amount of £50,000, principally 

 to the West Indies, along wdth herrings, for the use 

 of the slave, or rather negro population there. 



The sprat fishery in this country is carried on 

 during the winter months, after the termination of 

 the herring season. This fish, the Clupea sprattus 

 of authors, is principally taken in estuaries, and 

 elsewhere, in large bag-nets of a peculiar construc- 

 tion, from what are called stow boats, on the 

 Kent, Essex, and Suffolk coasts. The quantity 

 taken is sometimes enormous, and the greater part 

 is used to manm-e the land, forty bushels being 

 required to the acre. Sprats, moreover, are not 

 unfrequently, despite of their small size, eaten in 

 great numbers, being sometimes excessively cheap, 

 and in Edinburgh, for instance, this fish, there 

 know^n by the name of garvie-herring, is occasionally 

 hawked about in carts at a very low rate. 



A large species of herring, the shad, Clupea alosa, 

 is found to enter certain of our rivers at stated 

 periods, for the purpose of spawning, at which time 



