250 THE PILCHARD. 



are in actual use only during the night. It is found 

 that the fish strike the nets in much greater numbers 

 when it is dark than while it is light ; the darkest 

 nights, therefore, and those in which the surface of 

 the water is ruffled by a breeze, are considered the 

 most favourable. It is supposed that nets stretched in 

 the day-time alarm the fish, and cause them to quit the 

 places where that practice is followed : it is therefore 

 strictly forbidden. 



Herrings are often caught on the baited hooks of the 

 fisherman, and they are frequently taken by anglers 

 with an artificial fly. They are known to feed upon 

 minute crustaceans, small medusae, and the spawn and 

 fry of fishes ; and they are caught by boys when 

 angling from piers and rocks at various places along 

 our southern coast. The extravasation or redness on 

 the cheeks and gill-covers does not appear till the fish 

 has been dead twenty-four hours. 



What the herring is in value to the population of 

 the northern portions of the British Islands, Scotland 

 in particular, the pilchard is to the inhabitants of 

 Cornwall and the southern parts of Ireland. The 

 united testimony of all Cornish men engaged in the 

 Irish hening fishery is, that they never saw, in any 

 season, more than one or two pilchards to the north 

 either of the Small's Lighthouse on the Welsh shores, 

 or of a line extending from that spot to Waterford, in 

 Ireland. As they are engaged in the capture of the 

 herring, and as that is carried on in precisely the 

 same manner as the drift-net fishery for the pilchard, 

 their rarely taking more than one or two pilchards, in 

 a season to the north of that line, is worthy of notice. 



