HERRING. PILCHARD. 271 



'^'^ seems to vary considerably, both in the same and in 

 different districts ; so that we may have spring, summer, 

 and autumn herrings, as we know they have in some 

 parts of the Baltic/'* We cannot believe, until the sub- 

 ject is completely investigated, that all these variations 

 are met with in one species (^Clupea harengus, jig, 58.), 



which is tlie same 

 as the Cornish her- 

 ring, whose time of 

 spawning, and con- 

 sequent appearance 

 on the west coast of England, is always the same, how- 

 ever much they vary in the locality they choose, or in 

 the comparative numbers in which they appear ; in both 

 these latter circumstances, but not in the former, they are 

 proverbially capricious. The ancients do not appear to 

 have known either the herring or the pilchard ; although 

 there is a species sometimes met with on the Sicilian 

 coast so exactly like the latter, that even a professed 

 ichthyologist may take it for the same {fig. 57.) : as we 

 only met with it on two or three occasions, and that in 

 no abundance, in the fish-market of Palermo, we con- 

 clude it is not only rare, but does not live in shoals. 



(237.) The pilchard is another fish of this family, 

 and a much more important one to a large part of the 

 population on our western coasts. According to Mr. 

 Couch, whose valuable and most interesting history t 

 furnishes us with much of the following account, the 

 pilchard fishery, in the year 1827, employed, upon a 

 fair average, no less than 10,521 persons; while the 

 total amount of capital invested was calculated at 

 441,215/. Few persons, we imagine, would have any 

 idea of such enormous amounts, seeing that this fishery 

 is carried on in open boats, on a far less extensive scale 

 than those for cod on the banks of Newfoundland, or 

 for whales in the Arctic seas. Fishing, like all other 

 things, upon which the results do not depend upon 



* True ; but there are, according' to Mr. Yarrell, three species of her- 

 rings in the Baltic, and not one, as our author supposes. 

 f Inserted^in Yarrell's Fishes, vol. ii. p. 96. 



