SCOMBRID^. 87 



swimming crabs, Portunus pusillus, are taken among these fish, and upon which 

 they are believed to ha.ve been feeding. They also feed upon minute creatures 

 said to resemble sand-hoppers, which abound about February. In May, 1880, 

 I opened a number of these fishes, from the south coast, and all had their 

 stomachs full of ova on which they had evidently gorged themselves. 



Mr. Smith* observes upon having kept some of these pelagic fish from June 

 or July in the previous year in an aquarium, the size of which was eight feet by 

 six, and in August two were yet alive. Still they are difficult to retain in 

 confinement owing to their impatience of restriction and they injure themselves 

 by dashing about, besides being very susceptible to atmospheric vicissitudes. 

 Those captured earlier in the season in drift nets are not the best for this 

 purpose, because coming from deeper water they are liable to injury while being 

 meshed in the nets, or subsequently when being conveyed ashore : whereas 

 later on they migrate into shallower places where seines are employed. The 

 presence of fellow-captives of the same species which have been some time in 

 confinement in the aquarium is found to exercise a great controlling power on 

 the new comers, which for some time should be kept in the dark. 



Pontoppidan relates how a Norwegian sailor was destroyed by a shoal of 

 mackerel who surrounded him while bathing, carried him out to sea, and 

 managed, while pushing him along, to so bite and nibble at their victim that his 

 friends, with all their exertions, were scarcely able to get him alive into their boat, 

 where he soon expired from exhaustion and loss of blood. 



^lian records how fishermen trained mackerel to act the character of 

 decoys to shoals of their fellows whom they inveigled into their owners' nets : not 

 content with this, he informs his readers that this faculty was continued to the 

 descendant of their decoy fish for several generations. 



Modes of capture. — As the January fish obtain a very high price, the fishermen 

 seek the shoals in the earliest time of the year.f In the spring the Cornish 

 boats proceed eastward for mackerel fishing but they net toward.s the west, thus 

 meeting the shoals. The distance the boats proceed up the English Channel 

 varies in different seasons, while the earliest fish may be expected furthest out to 

 sea. The quantities captured are liable to great variations in different years, 

 several good harvests may follow one after another, or the reverse may occur; 

 likewise one set of boats may be making large catches while neighbouring ones 

 are scarcely securing a fish. I have already alluded to there being two classes of 

 mackerel : viz., the enormous May and June shoals that come for spawning and 

 consist of large fish : and the more erratic or in-shore ones that do not appear to 

 keep so well to stated times : the modes of capture of these two classes varies. 

 The nets employed in the English Channel are for the in-shore or smaller forms, 

 the mesh of which before being tanned averages from 27 to 28 half meshes to a 

 yard : but those employed at the entrance of the channel for the spawning shoals 

 average untanned from 21 to 22 half meshes to a yard. 



Early in the spring numerous fishing boats, manned with from five to eight 

 men each, assemble in Plymouth preparatory to the mackerel season, and for 

 the purpose of trying their fortune in the English Channel with drift nets, 

 which are shot of an evening and usually lifted after two or three hours, but shot 

 again in the very early morning, the best time for carrying on this occupation 

 having been found to be when daylight passes into darkness, or the night into 

 the morning. The fishermen believe that at the commencement of the season 

 the vision of these fishes is not so good as it becomes later on, when, however, 

 it may be materially assisted by lighter days and moonlight nights. It has 

 been remarked that drift nets are less productive during bright moonlight than 

 when the nights are darker, as the fish are believed to perceive and avoid the 

 net suspended for their capture. In darker weather, however, the mackerel force 



* Zoologist, 1867, p. 917. 



t C)u April 24th, 1880, a somewhat curious festival was celebrated on the Brighton beach 

 The fishing fleet being about to start in search of mackerel, the annual custom of holding what is 

 termed a " bending in " was observed, the chief feature being to keep open house around the bnats 

 where bread and cheese is gratuitously given to everyone who asks for it. — Anglers' Note-book, p. 129 



