586 THE OCEAN WORLD. 



persons watch night and day from the lofty cliffs along the Cornwall 

 coast, and the watchers (locally called " huers ") signal the boats at 

 sea beneath them the moment they see indications of the approach of 

 a shoal. Mr. Wilkie Collins gives an animated picture of the " huer :" 

 " A stranger in Cornwall, taking his first walk along the cliffs in 

 August, could not advance far without witnessing what would strike 

 him as a very singular and even alarming phenomenon. He would see 

 a man standing on the extreme edge of a precipice just over the sea, 

 gesticulating in a very remarkable manner, with a bush in his hand, 

 waving it to the right and to the left, brandishing it over his head, 

 sweeping it past his feet ; in short, acting the part apparently of a 

 maniac of the most dangerous description. It would add considerably 

 to the stranger's surprise if he were told that the insane individual 

 before him was paid for flourishing the bush at the rate of a guinea a 

 week. And if he advanced a little, so as to obtain a nearer view of 

 the madman, and observed a well-manned boat below turning carefully 

 to the right and left, as the bush turned, his mystification would 

 probably be complete, and his ideas as to the sanity of the inhabitants 

 would be expressed with grievous doubt. 



" But a few words of explanation would make him alter his opinion. 

 He would learn that the man was an important agent in the pilchard 

 fishery of Cornwall, that he had just discovered a shoal swimming 

 towards the land, and that the men in the boats were guided by his 

 gesticulations alone in their arrangements for securing the fish on 

 which so many depend for a livelihood." 



The pilchard, the young of which is believed to be the sardine of 

 commerce, where its place is not usurped by the sprat, is sometimes 

 taken in the Channel, on the coasts of Brittany and Cornwall, and 

 in the Mediterranean, and on the coast of Sardinia, whence its 

 commercial name. In Brittany floating-nets are employed. The 

 fishing is conducted in boats, each carrying five men ; hundreds 

 of these boats may sometimes be seen engaged at the same time 

 three or four leagues from the coast, the nets being only drawn 

 when they are fully charged, when the fish are arranged bed 

 upon bed in osier baskets, each boat returning habitually to port 

 when it has secured twenty-five thousand fishes. The fishery ex- 

 tends over five or six months, the produce being about six hundred 

 millions of sardines. 



