46 FOOD FISHES 



Two other kinds of fish, belonging to the herring family, 

 and caught like herrings in nets, are pilchards and sprats. 



The Pilchard fishery is carried on off the coasts of Cornwall 

 and Devon, and Penzance, Falmouth, and St. Ives are noted 

 ports in connexion with it. At Mevagissey the fish are pre- 

 served in oil in the same way as sardines (which are small 

 pilchards) are preserved off the coasts of France and Portugal. 



Sprats are caught in many places round our coasts, but 

 especially in the estuary of the Thames, where, mixed with 

 tiny young herrings, they form the whitebait for which Green- 

 wich is famous. 



Mackerel do not belong to the herring family, but they are 

 surface swimmers, and, like herrings, are caught in drift-nets 

 At Plymouth mackerel fishing is carried on to some extent all 

 the year round, but in the colder months the fishermen have 

 to go farther out to sea for them, to places where the water 

 is warmer. They are caught in the early summer off the coasts 

 of Norfolk, and Suffolk, and the west coasts of Scotland, 

 and Ireland, and the south-west of Norway. It would seem, 

 therefore, that they followed the inflowing Atlantic water up 

 the Channel into the southern part of the North Sea, and 

 round the north of Scotland to the coast of Norway. Plymouth 

 and Lowestoft are the two chief ports for them. 



Since herrings and similar fish depend ultimately for their 

 food on diatoms and other minute floating plants, and 

 these in their turn are chiefly dependent on light for their 

 development, it follows that one of the circumstances which 

 determine whether the catch of fish will be great or small is 

 the amount of sunlight two or three months earlier in the year. 



COD. Tiny young codfish (two or three inches long) are often 

 to be found in summer time nestling under the umbrella-like 

 covering of the soft, big, jellyfish which float about the sea, 

 and no one would imagine from their appearance at that stage 

 that they would develop into the great, ugly, voracious fish 

 which they afterwards become. A full-grown cod measures 

 from two to four feet in length, and many are even longer. 



