SAURY PIKE. 395 



by pailfuls : numbers were caught, and heaps flung ashore. 

 According to Mr. Neill, the Saury is not at all an uncom- 

 mon fish in the Frith of Forth, numbers running up with 

 the flood-tide in the autumn ; but they do not, like other 

 fishes, retire from the shallows at the ebbing of the tide, 

 but are then found by hundreds, having their long noses 

 stuck in the sludge, and are picked up by people from 

 Kincardine, Alloa, and other places, Mr. Pennant men- 

 tions that great numbers of Sauries were thrown ashore at 

 Leith, by a storm, in November 1768. The Saury has 

 been taken at Yarmouth on the east, and off Portland Island 

 on the south ; being, on some occasions, even plentiful in 

 Cornwall. Mr. Couch in his MS. says — 



" The Skipper is more strictly than the Gar-Pike a mi- 

 gratory fish, never being seen in the Channel until the 

 month of June, and it commonly departs before the end 

 of autumn. It does not swim deep in the water ; and in 

 its harmless manners resembles the Flying Fish, as well as 

 in the persecution it experiences from the ravenous inhabit- 

 ants of the ocean, and the method it adopts to escape from 

 their pursuit. It is gregarious, and is sometimes seen to 

 rise to the surface in large shoals, and flit over a considerable 

 space. But the most interesting spectacle, and that which 

 best displays their great agility, is when they are followed 

 by a company of Porpoises, or their still more active and 

 persevering enemies the Tunny and Bonito. Multitudes 

 then mount to the surface, and crowd on each other as they 

 press forward. When still more closely pursued, they 

 singly spring to the height of several feet, leap over each 

 other in singular confusion, and again sink beneath. Still 

 further urged, they mount again, and rush along the surface 

 by repeated starts for more than a hundred feet, without 

 once dipping beneath, or scarcely seeming to touch the 



