16 GILPIN-— ON THE FOOD FISHES OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



spawn, but are readily sold in the fish market, or make good No. 

 2's, or second quality pickled fish. 



It is very obvious that no creature should be harrassed during 

 the spawning period, and one would at once say there should be a 

 closed period during the spring for mackerel fishing, and that this 

 is the principal reason for the decline of the fishery. Making 

 rash laws, however, are to be deprecated, and our Legislature 

 should first gain an intimate knowdedge of the subject of sea 

 and river fisheries, with all its bearings of food, of habits, migra- 

 tions of fish, their mutual relations upon each other, and on 

 the currezats and tides that sweep our coasts, before they legist 

 late away the summer living of men, often too poor to wait 

 the fall supply. 



Extricating himself from the nets and toils strewing his path 

 eastward and westward for many a mile, but leaving many a poor 

 fellow behind, branded prime No. 1, our fish now leaves our 

 coasts, disappearing eastward. By the middle of September, especi- 

 ally if the nights are calm and warm, he comes to us again. Now 

 is the grand sea harvest. The fishermen, those hardy reapers of 

 the sea, are in picturesque groups on every headland or far 

 jutting out point, with practised eye scanning the waters for the 

 wake of the coming school. Inside of a deep bay they have their 

 seine set, (a seine being 10 nets or 100 fathoms of head line, 

 and 9 fathoms deep.) With one end attached to the shore it 

 runs off at right angles, about 30 fathoms, where it is fastened to a 

 buoy, it then makes an angle or L of about 30 more fathoms length, 

 the foot ropes lying upon the bottom. At the end of the L a boat 

 lies with the remainder of the seine, all ready to throw out. The 

 look-out man now gives the Avord. The school is coming. With 

 their eyes and heads just peeping out of water, their stiff" inflexible 

 bodies at an angle of 45, and a long train or wake curling back iu 

 the smooth water, there come a thousand greedy mouths and glit- 

 tering eyes, slowly peering about for food, and following the inden- 

 tations of the shore. Noiselessly and breathlessly the reapers of 

 this sea corn do their work, for so wary is the fish, that a glint of 

 light, a clap of the hand, or the swash of a rope overboard, or even 

 the thud of an oar falling upon the boat, and the whole school is 

 gone, to break water again far to seaward, and perhaps the $500, 



