298 The Herring 



proper, which is notable for its fickleness in visiting 

 various places around the coast. Fortunately I have 

 avoided making mention of the unaccountable numbers 

 of the Herring, for great as they are, one must reserve 

 all the superlatives at command for the Pilchard. 



I remember hearing from some St. Ives fishermen how 

 one season, when the fish were even more numerous than 

 usual, how it occurred to some enterprising net owners 

 that it would be a good thing to stretch a strong fleet 

 of nets across the narrow entrance to a tiny bay, a 

 mere pond of less than an acre in extent, at high water 

 when it was practically alive with Pilchards. They 

 did so, and when the tide ebbed they were appalled 

 at the magnitude of their haul. They sent word 

 hastily to all the population round about to come 

 and take their fill of the spoil, to farmers that they 

 might bring their waggons and cart off the fish for 

 manure, to everybody, in fact, who could in any way 

 lessen the heap of fish. But in vain. Nothing seemed 

 to make any impression upon it, for there were thou- 

 sands of tons. And the foolish greed of the originators 

 of this wholesale plan of capture was punished by an 

 epidemic which, begun in that mountain of putrefying 

 fish, devastated the neighbourhood. 



Only by remembering that in the ordinary course of 

 the fishery ten thousand hogsheads have been landed 

 in one port in a single day, roughly twenty-five millions 

 of fish, can we imagine what that gigantic haul shut 

 in the little bay must have been. The fish run so 

 thick in the schools that a pitchfork will stand upright 

 in them, as if stuck into a hogshead full. And it is 

 usual when a shoot of nets has been laid round a portion 

 of a school like that for boats to be loaded from the 

 inside of the circle as from a tank, and only take 

 ashore as much at a time as can conveniently be 



