126 
ANCHOVY. 
procured it from Herring nets at Wick, in Scotland. It is 
found also in the Baltic, and by Nilsson along the coasts of 
Scandinavia. Fabricius also reports from Greenland that he had 
found examples in the stomachs of seals, and that they are 
caught in Davis’s Straits at a long distance from land. In the 
westmost portion of the British Channel these fish are often 
taken in drift-nets employed in the fishery for Herrings and 
Pilchards; but this is only when they are sufficiently large to 
become entangled in the meshes as these chance to be doubled 
together, and there is sufficient evidence to shew that if nets 
of finer twine, with meshes of proper size, were employed, 
sufficient might be taken on the coast of Cornwall to supply 
the full amount of what is consumed in our own country, the 
whole of which, as sent to us from the Mediterranean, has beett^ 
so much as, with a tax on the importation of twopence in the 
pound, to bring into the exchequer year by year the sum of 
£1,764. As regards the time when these fish are near us, I 
have met with an example in March from the stomach of a 
Mackarel; in summer they are found at St. Ives, in the ground- 
seans employed in catching Launce. Mr. Dillwyn mentions 
them at Swansea in June, and they have been found heavy 
with spawn in September, as also in November, and sometimes 
they are seen so late as December. But it is only in the 
Mediterranean, which they are supposed to enter from the 
Atlantic for the purpose of shedding their spawn, that a fishery 
is carried on with the expectation of profit; the principal 
adventure being with drift-nets, to which the fish are attracted 
with artificial light, which is kept burning in an iron framework 
for the pui'pose. Duhamel describes at considerable length 
the fishery for Anchovies in the Mediterranean; the most 
successful method being to attract the fish by means of a 
light, and then to shoot a net at some distance round the 
boat that bore it. This plan was pursued with several boats 
in succession through the night, for even in moonlight it did 
not succeed. 
The largest Anchovy I have seen measured eight inches in 
length; the sides and cheeks compressed, but round over the 
back; the whole length to the fork of the tail about six times 
and three fourths of the depth. Upper jaw projecting much 
beyond the lower, gape wide, mystache slender, passing much 
