296 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



the fish-wharf, kindly allowed me to overhaul his books, 

 which gave me the following facts : 



Last year (1905) very few boats were engaged in the pur- 

 suit of the mackerel; this year (1906), however, something 

 like fifty luggers went after them. For May and June the 

 catches totalled 145 lasts ; up to June 2ist (a last of mackerel 

 numbering 12,000) catches amounted to something like a 

 million and three-quarters of fish. Prices realised as much as 

 eighteen shillings and a pound per hundred, the average being 

 about twelve-and-sixpence. The largest haul of any one 

 boat at one time was a last. One boat earned 250. There 

 were a few trunks of mackerel on the wharf on the 2ist, 

 which I saw ; but it was then remarked that they then 

 didn't catch enough to feed the crews. 



Strange fishes, which we usually expect to find consorting 

 with mackerel, this year were few. Surmullets were taken 

 in small numbers, with a few shads, garfish, scribbled 

 mackerel (Scomber scriptur), and salmon-trout. It is my 

 opinion that the mackerel were pursuing the " herring-syle," 

 which swarmed our coast this summer. 1 This, coupled with 

 a continuation of easterly breezes, seemed to suit well the 

 hungry, rollicking characteristics of this jolly fish. 



Mackerel were not caught in such numbers during the 

 herring-fishing as in some recent years. 



THE BELLOWS-FISH 



There is in the Tolhouse Museum a quaint and extremely 

 rare little fish the bellows-fish (Centriscus scolopax), known 

 sometimes as the sea woodcock and the trumpet-fish. It is 

 a native of the Mediterranean, and is said to be a common 

 species nowhere ; it is the merest straggler to the southern 

 coasts of Great Britain, and has, in a very few instances, 

 been cast up on the shore. Day (British Fishes) cites only 

 some half-dozen instances of its capture, some of which are 

 open to doubt, as he seems to suggest that the boar-fish 

 (Capros aper) may have been mistaken for it. An example 

 of the fish in question was landed at Milford Haven in the 

 latter part of April, 1904, and sent to me by an unknown 



1 In 1905 the herring-syle was remarkably and unaccountably scarce. 



