Use of Lights in Fisheries. 265 



has been adopted in maritime fishing, even by the very individuals 

 themselves, who, from being coast fishers also, might have been 

 expected to transfer a practice so obvious and easy, and so demon- 

 strated as to its utility, from one department of their trade to 

 another. Of so little use is knowledge without reasoning. To 

 the maritime fishermen in general, it is probable that the bare 

 fact itself is not known ; though we can scarcely conceive how it 

 should not be known, since it must have been witnessed by seamen 

 innumerable, in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. Could it be 

 made publicly known, it might be productive of great advan- 

 tages ; rather, I should say, could" the fishermen be induced to 

 follow it ; for the one is, unfortunately, by no means a necessary 

 consequence of the other. If a Welshman cannot be inducted to 

 fish at all, it is probable that there may be equal difficulty in 

 persuading a Cornishman to light a fire in his boat, though he 

 had seen the practice and its success for half his life. In the 

 particular instance under contemplation, however, even so im- 

 probable an event may perchance happen; since the persons 

 concerned in the pilchard fishery have at least the advantage of 

 belonging to a higher class of society ; if, indeed, that be a more 

 tractable class than the one far beneath it. Perhaps when educa- 

 tion shall spread wider among all classes, and when education 

 shall become somewhat other than it now is, a few of these 

 troublesome impossibilities will vanish. <. , 



The fact itself, the utility, is demonstrated by usages so widely 

 spread that the examples would fill more space than can here foe 

 spared to them. That it has been the practice of ancient, nations, 

 at various times and places, it would be quite superfluous to repeat. 

 At present, it is found on various parts of the coast of Africa, 

 perhaps on all; as it is no less common in the Eastern island?, 

 and with some of the inhabitants of the South Sea. In the 

 American rivers, it is the constant usage of the boatmen, whett^f 

 Indians or Europeans ; and its success is as; notorious as any- 

 thing can well be. To modern Greece, it -has descended -frofti 

 their ancestors ; as it is equally the constant usage: of Sicily, and 

 indeed of the Mediterranean at large. Tfce effect cannot bp 



