74 HERRING AND PILCHARD FISHERIES. 



Sardine replace the Herring in the Mediterranean, where it is 

 unknown. The importance of the Herring and Pilchard Fisheries 

 is very great. Some notion of it may be formed from the fact, 

 that more than 500,000 barrels of herrings only have been cured 

 in one year; of which more than half were exported. The num- 

 ber of persons to whom this Fishery gives employment in various 

 ways must, therefore, be very considerable, though it cannot be 

 exactly estimated ; and the value of the product as an article of 

 export trade is very important. The total number of persons 

 directly employed in the Cod and Herring fisheries of Britain, as 

 Fishermen, Coopers, Curers, &c., was nearly 87,000 in the year 

 1836. Of the extent of the Pilchard fishery some idea may be 

 formed from the fact, that about 12,000,000 of these fish have 

 been sold for home consumption alone in a single year ; and it 

 is said that more than this number have been brought into one 

 port in a single day. The average produce of the Cornish Pilchard 

 Fisheries is said to be no less than 60,000,000 of fish. The 

 principal centre of the Herring fishery is at Yarmouth in Nor- 

 folk ; that of the Pilchard fishery is the neighbourhood of the 

 Land's End. 



636. In the remainder of the Physostomi the ventral fins are 

 entirely wanting. These are at once^ known by their long, 

 slender, snake-like bodies, covered with a soft skin, and having 

 the scales very minute, and often almost invisible. The gill- 

 orifices are very small, and are prolonged far back, so that a sort 

 of long passage is formed from the branchial chamber to the sur- 

 face of the body. In this manner the gills are so much sheltered, 

 that the fish can remain out of the water for a considerable time, 

 without those organs being rendered unfit (by becoming dry) to 

 carry on the respiration. Of course, the access of water to the 

 gills cannot at any time be so free as it is in fishes with large 

 gill-openings ; and their respiration may be habitually less. It 

 is in animals with a feeble respiration, as has been already re- 

 marked in the case of Reptiles, that we find the greatest tenacity 

 of life ; and every one knows the difficulty with which the Eel 

 is killed the most cruel injuries being sustained by it without 

 the loss of its vitality. 



