80 
PILCHARD. 
Of its distribution in the south of Europe we are not able 
to say anything, until it is rendered certain whether the Pilchard 
be the same fish with the Sardine of the coasts of Spain and 
the Mediterranean: a question concerning which we will oflfer 
a few remarks when we enter on a description of the fish as it 
occurs in our own seas. But it is to the coast of Cornwall, and 
the shores of Devon bordering on that county, that we must 
look for the history of this fish, and the value of its fishery; 
and if we do not refer also to the south of Ireland for the same 
puipose, it is because the subject has not been there attended 
to in the manner its importance demands. It is in the dis- 
tricts just named that the Pilchard is to be regarded as a 
native, for it is there they propagate, and may be found at all 
seasons. There also they perform their migratory motions, 
which, with an approach to regularity, are yet attended with 
such vanety as to stamp their habits and motions with the 
character of capriciousness, and which belongs also to the 
ot er species of this family in such a manner as to constitute 
or a of them a common likeness. The same remark was 
made so long ago as in the time of the poet Oppian, who 
under the name of Chalkis, refers to a fish which his translator 
supposes to be no other than our common Pilchard. 
“Pilchards and Shads in shoals together keep, 
The numerous fry disturbs the mantling deep- 
No home they know, nor can confinement lov4 
Hut, fond of hourly change, unsettled rove; 
Now choose the rooks, now seek the wider seas : 
No place can long the restless wanderers please, 
ihey soon grow weary when they once enjov: 
And pleasure will, as soon as tasted, cloy.” 
And thus it happens, that although it is known when the 
season of the fish’s arrival is come, so little is certain of the 
time when the schools will approach a particular district, that 
the fishermen are kept in daily suspense, and their individual 
success from year to year becomes a matter of great uncertainty, 
I he usual course of the movements of the Pilchards is that 
they seek the deeper water of the nearer portion of the 
Atlantic in the colder season of the year-; and that they ai-e 
then at the bottom is often known by their being found in 
the stomachs of the larger fishes which are caught with lines 
