29 
Newquay. Thirty-five years ago the principal South coast 
seining fishery was in Mount’s Bay, now it is at Mevagissey, 
and it is no question of new seine fisheries having been 
established. It is due solely and entirely to a change of 
habitat on the part of the fish. We have many things yet 
to learn about the pilchard. 
One thing I have learned since I began to write this 
paper, is that during the mackerel season (February to 
June) and before our pilchard season commences, numerous 
shoals of very large pilchards are met with by our mackerel 
drivers in the deep sea, eight leagues and over, south and 
west of the Scilly Islands. These large pilchards are mostly 
females full of roe, ready to be shed, and unlike most fish in 
that condition are so dry and tasteless as to be utterly 
useless as food. A test of their size is that they are taken 
in the meshes of the mackerel nets. 
Like the mackerel the pilchard is not a true migrant, but 
comes in from the deep sea, shoaling by day and scattering 
by night, and remains on for its season. Unlike the 
mackerel it never takes a bait,* and is but very rarely seen 
in our seas except in its season ; but again, like the mackerel, 
it is too thorough a nomad to stand the confinement of an 
aquarium. And those of you who wish to see either of 
them alive must seek for them in their native haunts. 
* Whilst this paper was in the press information reached me that a 
pilchard had been captured, hooked in the mouth, on a white-feather 
whiffing-fly; but as two other pilchards were at the same time 
captured, hooked in the side, it is probable that they were all acci¬ 
dently hooked out of a shoal through which the whiffing-line was 
passing. The fish may have been playing with the fly rather than 
attempting to feed on it. 
