€co THE OCEAN WORLD. 
“A stranger in Cornwall, taking his first walk along the cliffs in 
August, could not advance far without witnessing what would strike 
him as a very singular and even alarming phenomenon. He would see 
a man standing on the extreme edge of a precipice just over the sea, 
gesticulating in a very remarkable manner, with a bush in his hand, 
waving it to the right and to the left, brandishing it over his head, 
sweeping it past his feet ; in short, acting the part apparently of a 
maniac of the most dangerous description. It would add considerably 
to the stranger’s surprise if he were told that the insane individual 
before him was paid for flourishing the bush at the rate of a guinea a 
Fig. 384.—The Pilchard (Clupea pilchardus). 
week. And if he advanced a little, so as to obtain a nearer view of 
the madman, and observed a well-manned boat below turning carefully 
to the right and left, as the bush turned, his mystification would 
probably be complete, and his ideas as to the sanity of the inhabitants 
would be expressed with grievous doubt. 
“But a few words of explanation would make him alter his opinion. 
He would learn that the man was an important agent in the pilchard 
fishery of Cornwall, that he had just discovered a shoal swimming 
towards the land, and that the men in the boats were guided by his 
gesticulations alone in their arrangements for securing the fish on 
which so many depend for a livelihood.” 
Where the pilchards come from, and whither they go, seems alike 
unknown. All that is certain is, that they are met with in shoals 
swimming past the Scilly Islands as early as July. In August the 
inshore fishing begins, and they appear on various parts of the coast 
