OSSEOUS FISHES. 
589 
Lowestoft and Yarmouth take their great harvest in May and June. 
In the Firth of Forth, and on the north coast of Scotland, at a few 
weeks later. 
As mackerel are very voracious, they greedily dervour all sorts ol 
bait, but they are chiefly taken by the drift-net. -The drilt-net is 
twenty feet deep and a hundred and twenty feet long, well buoyed at the 
upper edge, but, without weights at the bottom. The meshes, made of 
fine twine tanned to a reddish, colour for preservation, are calculated to 
admit the head of the fish and catch it by the gills, so as to prevent 
its withdrawal. A fleet of mackerel-boats dragging these large nets, 
which are extended vertically in the sea, or float between the two 
tides, are well represented in Pl. XXXII. 
The flesh of the mackerel is fat and melting. Among the ancients a 
liquid was extracted from this fat called garum, which was considered 
a very nourishing preparation. The price of this liquid was very high ; 
in modern measures it was valued at about sixteen shillings the pint. 
It was acrid, half putrefied, and very nauseous, but it had the property 
of rousing the appetite and stimulating the digestive organs. Garum 
played the part of a condiment at a period when the exciting array of 
Indian spices were unknown. Seneca charges it, as we do pepper and 
other hot spices taken in excess, with destroying the stomach and 
health of gourmands. This garum is spoken of by the traveller 
Pierre l'elon, writing in the sixteenth century, as being held in great 
estimation at Constantinople in his time, Kondelet, the author of a 
very remarkable book published in 1554, who ate garum at the table 
of William l’ellicier, Bishop of Maguelonne, thought he could trace 
the liquid not to the mackerel, but to one of the Sparo'ides (Spams 
smarts) . 
The mackerel possesses phosphorescent properties which cause it 
to shine in the dark, especially after death, when decomposition has 
commenced, for it is of an oily consistence. 
The mackerel is not only voracious, but, in spite of their small size, 
they have the hardihood to attack fishes much larger and much 
stronger than themselves. It is even said that they love human flesh. 
According to the naturalist bishop, Pontoppidan, who lived in the 
sixteenth century, a sailor belonging to a vessel which had cast anchor 
in one of the Norwegian ports, when bathing one day in the sea, was 
assailed by a shoal of mackerel. His companions came to his relief ; 
