636 THE OCEAN WORLD. 
about the month of April that they begin to be met with, but they 
are then still small and without milt or roe. In the months of June 
and July the fish is in its most perfect state. Towards the end of 
September and October mackerel of the same year’s hatching are 
taken ; finally, in November and December, the fishermen still fish 
them, and send them to market, but this is an irregularity ; and the 
fishermen of Lowestoft and Yarmouth take their great harvest in 
May and June; in the Frith of Forth, and on the north coast of 
Scotland, at a few weeks later. 
As mackerel are very voracious, they greedily devour all sorts of 
bait, but they are chiefly taken by the drift-net. he drift-net is 
twenty feet deep and 120 feet long, well buoyed at the upper edge, 
but without weights at the bottom. The meshes, made of fine twine 
tarred to a reddish colour for preservation, are calculated to admit 
the head of the fish and catch it by the gill-covers so as to prevent 
its withdrawal. A fleet of mackerel-boats dragging these large nets, 
which are extended vertically in thé sea, or float between the two 
tides, is well represented in PLATE XXX. 
The flesh of the mackerel is fat and high flavoured. Among the 
ancients a liquid was extracted from this fat called garam, which was 
considered a very nourishing preparation. The price of this liquid 
was very high; in modern measures it was valued at about sixteen 
shillings the pint: It was acrid, half putrefied, and very nauseous, 
but it had the property of rousing the appetite and stimulating the 
digestive organs. Garum played the part of a condiment at a period 
when the exciting array of Indian spices was unknown. Seneca 
charges it, as we do pepper and other hot spices taken in excess, 
with destroying the stomach and health of gourmands. This garum 
is spoken of by the traveller Pierre Belon, writing in the sixteenth 
century, as being held in great estimation at Constantinople in his 
time. Rondelet, the author of a very remarkable book published in 
1554, who ate garum at the table of William Pellicier, Bishop of 
Maguelonne, thought he could trace the liquid not to the mackerel, 
but to one of the Sparoids (Sparus smaris). 
The mackerel possesses phosphorescent properties, which cause it 
to shine in the dark, especially after death, when decomposition has 
commenced. 
The mackerel is not only voracious, but, in spite of its small size, 
it has the hardihood to attack fishes much larger and much stronger 
than itself. It is even said that they love human flesh. According: 
to the naturalist bishop, Pontoppidan, who lived in the sixteenth 
century, a sailor belonging to a vessel which had cast anchor in one 
