SCOMBBEID^. 215 



erel were hawked about the streets of Dover, at sixty for a sHl- 

 ling, or five for a penny ; whilst they so blockaded the Brighton 

 coast, that on one night it became impossible to land the multi- 

 tudes taken, and at last both fish and nets went to the bottom 

 together. 



Mackerel are an exceedingly greedy fishj and from an 

 anecdote of Pontoppidan, we may infer that their chief 

 captor, man, would often become their prey did the op- 

 portunity offer. This author relates that a Norwegian 

 sailor was destroyed by a shoal of these small fierce foes, 

 who encompassed him as he was bathing (so it was not 

 the poor fellow's blue jacket that attracted them), car- 

 ried him out to sea, and contrived, whilst running him 

 down, so to nibble, gnaw, and maim their victim, that 

 his friends, in spite of all their efforts, were only just 

 able to get him alive into the boat, where, in a state of 

 acute suffering from exhaustion and ansemia, he speedily 

 expired. 



Mackerel, according to one of the ' miUe et un' tales 

 of ^han, were trained by certain fishermen to act a 

 treacherous part towards their own kind, entering rea- 

 dily for the purpose into an unnatural league with these 

 men, who supplied them with food, whilst they in return 

 scoured the seas and lured to destruction any wandering 

 shoal in want of a pilot : the friendship between the fish- 

 ermen and these decoy favourites was, says ^lian, of a 

 most sacred and inviolable character, and even subsisted 

 by some mode of tradition amongst the descendants of 

 the contracting parties for many generations. 



Mackerel are generally supposed to pass the winter 

 in creeks in the remote north, and (on the authority 

 of a French admiral, quoted by Lacepede) with their 

 heads plunged into soft sand, where, in consequence of 

 the compactness of the phalanx, their serried myriads, 

 seen through the clear lymph, present the appearance 

 of a submarine rocky flooring. This vertical position they 



