1708 Fishes. 



them. The fishery on the Devonshire coasts, such as at Dartmouth, 

 Bogburry Bay, &c. are, I believe, all but given up. St. Ives, from 

 having only one seine, and that belonging to Messrs. Boletho's, has 

 now 180, a number greater than all the other stations can produce. 

 The general place of resort for the pilchard is to the west of the Scilly 

 Islands and the circumjacent water, some of the smaller shoals even 

 frequenting the southern shores of Ireland ; but Thomas Boletho, 

 Esq., informs me that in 1836 the great mass of the fish appeared on 

 the north-east part of the Bay of Biscay in September. In that sea- 

 son the fishery was very late ; so late, indeed, that it was almost given 

 up as an entire failure. A captain of one of his vessels from the Me- 

 diterranean arrived, and told him of an immense shoal he had passed 

 two days before, and which he left forty miles to the south-west of the 

 Lizard, in the Bay of Biscay, the course of which was in a north- 

 easterly direction. His tale was, that from the time he fell in with 

 them he had a light breeze and was going before it about five miles 

 an hour, and that the time occupied in going through the mass was 

 more than twenty hours, making at least a shoal of a hundred miles in 

 length, the breadth he could not ascertain. He discovered what they 

 were by taking some up in the ship's bucket. Two days after, his 

 account was confirmed, by the shoal approaching the shore, and ex- 

 tending from Fowey to the Land's End, a distance fully equal to what 

 he had described, if the windings of the shores enter into the consi- 

 deration. While, however, they do not extend much beyond the Cor- 

 nish shores, yet some have been taken in the Downs, and off Dover, 

 and the Isle of Wight, by the herring drift-nets ; and a few have been 

 taken on the Coast of Spain. In 1791, the drift-nets took large 

 quantities in February, and in 1834 they were abundant at Mevagissey 

 about the same time. It may, therefore, now be asserted that the pil- 

 chard remains off the Cornish shores throughout the year. The 

 largest quantity ever secured in one day occurred at St. Ives in Sep- 

 tember last, the 30,000 hogsheads referred to before. 



It may be interesting, perhaps, to some of your ichthylogical read- 

 ers, to refer, however briefly, to a few of the more casual traits of this 

 small, but important fish. On the southern shores of Cornwall the 

 herring is rarely to be met with, except in a few straggling companies. 

 On the northern shores, however, the herring is more abundantly 

 caught. It is a habit of all the species of the genus Clupea to asso- 

 ciate in companies and shoals ; but the herring and pilchard never 

 intermingle. Small companies of each will pass and repass each 

 other without mixing. Early in the season some boats will capture 



