86 
PILCHAKD. 
sometimes happens that immense multitudes of fish will collect 
far from land, with an evident intention to proceed towards 
the shallower water. An instance of this was met with m 
the month of July, at forty leagues in a south-west direction 
from the Scilly Islands; and so large and dense was the 
assemblage that the course of the ship was supposed to have 
been obstructed by them, and some were taken up by merely 
dipping a bucket among them. More usually, however, they 
do not assemble in large bodies until they have been for a 
time in the neighbourhood of the coast, and it is then that 
they assume the arrangement of a mighty army, with its 
wings stretched out parallel to the land; while the numberless 
smaller bodies of which it is composed are contmimlly shifting 
their position, joining together and separating again. Ihere 
are three stations occupied by this body which have^ great 
influence on the success of the fishery; one of which is 
eastward of the Lizard Point, and reaches to the Bay of 
Bigbury, near the Bolthead, in Devonshire, beyond which 
little success attends the fishery, although at Dartmouth some 
efibrts are made towards it. A second station is from the 
Lizard to the Land’s End; and the third is on the north 
coast, where the principal station is at St. Ives. It is common 
for one of these districts to be full of fish while few are to 
be seen in either of the others; but late in the season the 
schools often change from one district to anothw, or pass m 
succession along all the shores of a county. It is at this late 
season especially that they shew themselves at St. Ives, where, 
therefore, they are not usually expected until October or 
November: but when they come it is in immense multitudes, 
and usually from the eastward; a circumstance which is ac- 
counted for by the supposition that from the west they have 
been influenced by the course of a current that has taken a 
circuit of the coast bounded by the shores of Ireland, AVales, 
and the north of Devonshire. 
In the ordinary season of the fishery the subordinate move- 
ments of the smaller bodies are much influenced by the tide, 
directly against the current of which they do not proceed; 
and the large extended body will sometimes remain at a 
distance from the land, although parallel with it, for several 
weeks, and then suddenly, as if by general consent, approach 
