SPINOUS FISHES. 295 



Has such, that a man who should put a spear in the water, as Olaus 

 Magnus asserts, would see it stand on end, being prevented from fall- 

 ing. But soon after that period, these animals were seen to desert 

 the Norway shores, and took up along the German coast, where the 

 Hanse-Towns drove a very great trade by their capture and sale ; but, 

 for above a century, the herrings have, in a great measure, forsaken 

 them ; and their greatest colonies are seen in the British Channel, 

 and upon the Irish shores. It is not easy to assign a cause for this 

 seemingly capricious desertion ; whether the number of their finny 

 enemies increasing along the northern coasts, may have terrified the 

 herring tribe from their former places of resort ; or, whether the quan- 

 tity of food being greater in the British Channel, may not allure them 

 thither, is not easy to determine ! 



The pilchard, which is a fish differing little from the herring, makes 

 the coast of Cornwall its place of principal resort. Their arrival on 

 that coast is soon proclaimed by their attendants the birds, and the 

 larger fishes ; and the whole country prepare to take the advantage of 

 this treasure, providentially thrown before them. The natives some- 

 times enclose a bay of several miles extent with their nets called seines. 

 To direct them in their operations, there were some years ago (but I 

 believe they are discontinued) several men placed on eminences near 

 the shore, called huers, who, with brooms in their hands, gave signals 

 where the nets were to be extended, and where the shoals of fishes 

 lay : this they perceived by the colour of the water, which assumed 

 a tincture from the shoals beneath. By these means, they sometimes 

 take twelve or fifteen hundred barrels of pilchards at a draught ; and 

 they place them in heaps on the shore. It often happens, that the 

 quantity caught exceeds the salt or the utensils for curing them ; and 

 then they are carried off to serve for the purposes of manure. This 

 fishery employs not only great numbers of men at sea, training them 

 to naval affairs, but also numbers of women and children at land, in 

 salting and curing the fish ; in making boats, nets, ropes, and casks, 

 for the purposes of taking or fitting them for sale. The poor are fed 

 with the superfluity of the capture ; the land is manured with the of- 

 fals : the merchant finds the gain of commission, and honest com- 

 merce ; the fisherman a comfortable subsistence from his toil. " Ships," 

 says Dr. Borlase, " are often freighted hither with salt, and into fo- 

 reign countries with the fish, carrying off at the same time a part of 

 our tin. The usual produce of the number of hogsheads exported for 

 ten years, from 1747 to 1756 inclusive, amounted to near thirty thou- 

 sand hogsheads each year ; every hogshead has amounted, upon an 

 average, to the price of one pound thirteen shillings and threepence. 

 Thus the money paid for pilchards exported, has annually amounted 

 10 near fifty thousand pounds." 



Whence these infinite numbers are derived, still remains obscuie ; 

 but it will increase our wonder to be told, that so small a fish as the 

 stickleback, which is seldom above two inches long, and that one 

 would think could easily find support in any water, is yet obliged to 

 colonize, and leave its native fens in search of new habitations. 

 Once every seventh or eighth year, amazing shoals of these appear in 

 the river Welland, near Spalding, and come up the stream, forming 

 one great column. They are supposed to be multitudes collected io 



