PILCHARD. 95 



Borlase speaks of a catch amounting to three 

 thousand hogsheads, and as two thousand five 

 hundred fish make a hogshead, there must have 

 been the vast number of 75,000,000 fish taken in 

 one catch. 



In the year 1847 I was coming in from sea- 

 wards one morning in September, off Plymouth 

 Sound, when I heard a great blowing of horns 

 (a custom very general amongst fishermen when 

 catching pilchards), and on drawing near we found 

 a boat whose nets were completely choked with 

 pilchards, a fish being in every mesh ; the weight 

 was so great that the men could not draw in the 

 nets and had hoisted one to the mast-head. Just 

 as we came near the sun rose up out of the sea, 

 and as the boat rolled to and fro the fish looked 

 like a piece of scale armour, every scale showing 

 a different tint, from emerald, red, blue, and 

 green, with all the intermediate tints of the rain- 

 bow. Such a gorgeous sight is not often seen, 

 and should have had a Byron there to have corn- 

 made so rapid a voyage that they were employed to take the 

 mails from the Cape to Melbourne, arriving before the mail 

 packet, although only sixteen tons. 



