88 PILCHARD. 



t 



bow of the boat, to be shifted to the quarter when the nets 

 are hauled; and the whole thus stretched out is left to float 

 with or across the tide without the sails being set, except in 

 very calm weather, when a little headway is necessary, in 

 order to keep the nets from becoming folded together. Within 

 a few years an improvement has been made in the arrange- 

 ment of the nets, by which they have been rendered more 

 effective, and also those hazards avoided to which they had 

 been exposed by becoming entangled in the keels and rudders 

 of ships. It consists in diminishing the number and size of 

 the corks along the head line, and in placing cords of the 

 length of two or three fathoms at proper distances, with a 

 stout buoy of cork attached to each. By this means the nets 

 are sunk beyond the reach of ships, and to a depth sufficient 

 to reach the fish as they swim below, even when none are 

 otherwise to be discovered. This method of reaching the fish, 

 at whatever depth they swim, has long been in use on the 

 coast of Norway in the taking of Herrings. 



The other mode of conducting the fishery for Pilchards is 

 by seans, for the fitting out of which two principal boats are 

 provided, each of which is about forty feet in length and ten 

 feet wide at the beam. The first of these is termed the scan 

 boat, and is furnished with a sean that is about two hundred 

 and twenty fathoms in length and twelve in depth; but these 

 proportions are varied in different districts; and the whole is 

 buoyed up along the head-rope with corks, and weighed down 

 at the bottom with leads. The second boat is the volyer or 

 follower, which carries a sean of from a hundred to a hundred 

 and twenty fathoms in length, and eighteen at its greatest 

 depth. In form, as well as in extent, this, which is termed 

 the tuck sean, is different from the former, or stop sean, its 

 middle portion being shaped into a hollow, or hunt, as best 

 fitted to the use for which it is designed. A third boat, 

 much smaller than the others, is called the lurker. The crew 

 of a sean consists of eighteen men, with commonly a boy, 

 and of these seven are assigned to each of the larger boats, 

 while the remaining four, including the master seancr, belong 

 to the lurker. On some parts of the coast another individual 

 of no small importance is termed the huer, and on his skill 

 in discovering the presence of the school, and the direction 



