137 



Newquay. Thirty-five years ago the principal South coast 

 seining fishery was in Mount's Bay, now it is at Mevagissey, 

 and it is no question of new seine fisheries having been 

 established. It is due solely and entirely to a change of 

 habitat on the part of the fish. We have many things yet 

 to learn about the pilchard. 



One thing I have learned since I began to write this 

 paper, is that during the mackerel season (February to 

 June) and before our pilchard season commences, numerous 

 shoals of very large pilchards are met with by our mackerel 

 drivers in the deep sea, eight leagues and over, south and 

 west of the Scilly Islands. These large pilchards are mostly 

 females full of roe, ready to be shed, and unlike most fish in 

 that condition are so dry and tasteless as to be utterly 

 useless as food. A test of their size is that they are taken 

 in the meshes of the mackerel nets. 



Like the mackerel the pilchard is not a true migrant, but 

 comes in from the deep sea, shoaling by day and scattering 

 by night, and remains on for its season. Unlike the 

 mackerel it never takes a bait,* and is but very rarely seen 



* Whilst [this Paper was in the press, and as a result from the 

 reading of it, I received information to the following effect. 



The fact above noted of the occurrence of the pilchard in large 

 shoals south and west of the Scilly Islands in the early spring accounts 

 for the appearance of the fish in the English Channel in July and 

 August in each year. The course of their journey from the deep seas 

 into the Bristol Channel, and thence westward round the Land's End 

 in November, remained for explanation. Mr. William Eddy, a skilled 

 fisherman in the matter of pilchards, tells me that for several years 

 during which he was manager of some copper mines near Baltimore, 

 in Ireland, he noticed lying around the islands in Baltimore Bay large 

 shoals of pilchards for some days in every month of September or 

 October, which would be about six weeks before the date of their 

 usual occurrence in the Bristol Channel. The shoals hung about for 

 a day or two, and then went off into the deep sea. 



Corresponding to this statement is another which has come to me 



