304 



HISTORY OF FISHES. 



45. The Clupea or Herring. 1 The body 

 a little oblong ; the head with a small 

 beak; the fin covering the gills with eight 

 rays. 



ing bird, by springing out of the water and seizing it 

 by a sudden snap. 



A singular encounter, which took place at Waldstein, 

 between a pike and a fox, is commemorated in a German 

 print. Some country-people had taken a large pike, 

 but in conveying it home during the night, it escaped. 

 As it was a large fish, they returned with torches in 

 search of their prize, and after some time found it on the 

 grass, having fast hold of a fox by the nose. The fox, 

 caught in this novel trap, endeavoured in vain to escape, 

 and it was not until the pike was killed, that it was 

 possible to separate them. 



Pikes are in the habit of basking in the sun, when 

 they float upon the surface of the water ; at this time 

 they are sometimes shot, or taken by a noose of wire, 

 ijxed to a strong pole about four yards long, by which 

 the wire, with great slowness, is conducted over the 

 pike's head, gills, and fins, and then hoisted with a jerk 

 to land. 



The Saury Pike or Skipper, was first described as a 

 British species by Ray : those he saw were taken on 



the Cornish coast. The Rev. Mr Low, in his Natural 

 History of Orkney, says, that the year preceding that 

 in which he wrote his Fauna Orcadensis, such a glut of 

 these fish set into the head of Kerston bay, that they 

 could be taken by pailfuls: numbers were caught, and 

 heaps flung ashore. According to Mr Neill, the saury 

 is not at all an uncommon fish in the Frith of Forth, 

 numbers running up with the flood-tide in the autumn; 

 hut they do not, like other fishes, retire from the shallows 

 at the ebbing of the tide, but are then found by hundreds, 

 having their long noses stuck in the sludge, and are 

 picked up by people from Kincardine, Alloa, and other 

 places Mr Pennant mentions that great numbers of 

 sauries were thrown ashore at Leith, by a storm, in 

 November 176S. The saury has been taken at Yarmouth 

 on the east, and off" Portland Island on the south ; being, 

 on some occasions, even plentiful in Cornwall. Mr 

 Couch says 



" The skipper is more strictly than the gar-pike a 

 migratory fish, never being seen in the channel until the 

 month of June, and it commonly departs before the end 

 of autumn. It does not swim deep in the water ; and 

 in its harmless manners resembles the flying fish, as well 

 as in the persecution it experiences from the ravenous 

 inhabitants of the ocean, and the method it adopts to 

 escape from their pursuit. It is gregarious, and is some- 

 times seen to rise to the surface in large shoals, and flit 

 over a considerable space. But the most interesting 

 spectacle, and that which best displays their great agility, 

 is when they are followed by a company of porpoises, or 

 their still more active and persevering enemies the 

 tunny and bonito. Multitudes then mount to the sur- 

 face, and crowd on each other as they press forward. 

 When still more closely pursued, they singly spring to 

 the height of several feet, leap over each other in singu- 

 lar confusion, and again sink beneath. Still further 

 urged, they mount again, and rush along the surface by 

 repeated starts for more than a hundred feet, without 



1 See an account of the Herring in a succeeding page. 



46. The Exocctus or Flyiiuj-fish.* The body 

 oblong ; the head almost three-cornered ; the 

 fin covering the gills with seven rays ; the 

 pectoral fins placed high, and as long as the 



once dipping beneath, or scarcely seeming to touch the 

 water. At last, the pursuer springs alter them, usually 

 across their course ; and again they all disappear toge- 

 ther. Amid such multitudes for more than twenty 

 thousand have been judged to be out of the water toge- 

 ther some must fall a prey to the enemy ; but as many 

 hunt in company, it may be long before the pursuit is 

 abandoned. From inspection, we should scarcely judge 

 the fish to be capable of such considerable flights ; for 

 the fins, though numerous, are small, and the pectorals 

 far from large though the angle of their articulation is 

 well fitted to raise the fish by the direction of their mo- 

 tions to the surface; the force of its spring must there- 

 fore be chiefly ascribed to the tail and finlets. It rarely 

 takes a bait; and when this has happened, the boat has 

 been under sail, the men fishing with a lask, or slice of 

 mackerel made to imitate a living bait. The skipper has 

 not been commonly taken since the drift fishermen began 

 the practice of sinking their nets a fathom or two beneath 

 the surface a circumstance which marks the depth to 

 which they swim ; but before this, it was usual to take 

 them, sometimes to the amount of a few hundreds, at 

 almost every shoot of the pilchard nets." YarreWs 

 British Fishes. 



2 The Flying Fish. " No familiarity," says Captain 

 Basil Hall, " with the sight, can ever render us indirler- 

 ent to the graceful flight of these most interesting of all 

 the finny, or, rather, winged tribe. On the contrary, 

 like a blight day, or a smiling countenance, the more 

 we see of them, the more we value their presence. I 

 have, indeed, hardly ever observed a person so dull, that 

 his eye did not glisten as he watched a shoal, or, it may 

 be called, a covey of flying-fish, rise from the sea, and 

 skim along for several hundred yards. There is some- 

 thing in it so peculiar, so totally different from every 

 thing else in other parts of the world, that our wonder 

 goes on increasing every time we see one take its flight ; 

 so that we may easily excuse the old Scottish wife, who 

 said to her son, when he was relating what he had seen 

 abroad; "You may hae seen rivers o' milk, and moun- 

 tains o' sugar, but you'll ne'er gar (make) me believe 

 you hae seen a fish that could flee !' 



" I have endeavoured to form an estimate as to the 

 length of these flights, and find two hundred yards, or 

 about an eighth of a mile, set down in my notes as about 

 the longest distance, which they perform in somewhat 

 more than half a minute. These flights, however, vary 

 from that length to a. mere skip out of the water. Gener- 

 ally speaking, they fly to a considerable distance in a 

 straight line, in the wind's eye, that is, exactly towards 

 the point from which the wind blows, and then gradually 

 turn off to leeward. But sometimes they merely skim 

 the surface, so as to touch only the tops of the waves. 

 A notion prevails afloat, but I know not how just it may 

 be, that they can fly no longer than whilst their wings, 

 or fins, remain wet. That they rise as high as twenty feet 

 above the water is certain, from their being found in 

 parts of a ship, which are full as much as that out of the sea. 

 I remember seeing one about nine inches in length, and 

 weighing not less, I should suppose, than half a pound, 

 skim into the Volage's main-deck port just abreast of 

 the gang-way. One of the seamen was coming up the 

 quarter-deck ladder at the moment, when the fish, enter- 

 ing the port, struck the astonished mariner on the temple, 

 knocked him off the step, and very nearly threw him 

 down at full length. 



" The amiable Humboldt good-naturedly suggests that 

 the flights of these fish may be mere gambols, and 

 not proofs of their being pursued by their enemy, the 



