214: FISHING BY THE ELECTRIC LIGHT. 



over a division of the buildings. At another place was a 

 leech-lifter, and near it were deadly traps for taking crabs 

 and lobsters. From the roofs hung stretches of Scotch-made 

 herring-nets, by far the best of their kind ; and with such a 

 wall of meshes floating in the sea as these nets present to 

 the fish, each stretch being about a mile long, and with 

 a fleet of a few hundred boats nightly centered on some well 

 known fishing-ground, the wonder is, not that fishes are 

 scarce and dear, but that a single herring could escape. 



In 1864 an attempt was first made to fish by the electric 

 light at Dunkirk, on the coast of France. A magneto-elec- 

 tric machine was afterwards employed. The light was 

 constant at one hundred and eighty feet under water, and 

 it extended over a large surface. As soon as the submarine 

 lantern was immersed, shoals of fish of every description 

 came to sport in the illuminated circle, while the fishermen 

 outside of it spread their nets from the boats. The light 

 illuminating the deep sea, the fish arriving in shoals, at- 

 tracted by the fictitious sun, the boats at the edge of the 

 lighted circle, the deep silence interrupted only by the 

 grating of the electro-magnetic machine, formed altogether 

 an imposing sight. 



Before leaving this part of our subject, we may notice a 

 curious invention stated in Rymer's *' Foedera," for which 

 Charles I. granted a patent in 1632 to a physician, " for a 

 fish-call or looking-glass for fishes in the sea, very useful for 

 fishermen to call all kinds of fishes to their nets." 



A singular method of getting fish is that in which other 

 animals are employed for the purpose. Birds are thus 

 trained by the Chinese. Falcons are not more sagacious in 

 the pursuit of their prey in the air than in another element. 

 They are called alvoau^ and are about the size of a goose, 

 with gray plumage, webbed feet, and have a long and slen- 

 der bill, crooked at the point. Their faculty of diving, or 

 remaining under water, is not more extraordinary than that 



