that month they arc small but in excellent condition as 
food. 
Before I pass away from the mackerel, on which I have 
detained you a great deal too long, I wish to tell you of 
another discovery of mine, which no doubt equally affects 
all fish ; but as my observation of it was made on mackerel, 
I confine my narrative to that fish. Its habit of shoaling- 
o 
in the daytime taught me the curious fact that the shoal 
leaves behind it a distinct scent in the water, and that there 
are other inhabitants of the sea who quite understand 
what that scent means, and utilize it. 
A shoal of fish in the water looks, at a distance, like the 
shadow of a cloud moving steadily on. As the shade 
nears you, you can see the fish “playing,” jumping out of 
the water just as small trout do, only in a large shoal you 
will see thousands of fish out of the water at the same 
time. Each sort of fish gives a colour to the water which 
is peculiar to it, so that an experienced fisherman knows 
at sight whether the shadow of the cloud, which he knows 
to be a shoal of fish, covers mackerel, or pilchard, or 
herring, or sprat. I was once standing on the beach with 
an old fisherman when we saw a straggling shoal of fish 
about half-a-mile long, swimming very slowly, which we 
could not make out. Their colour was new to him. So 
we took a boat and went out to them, and found they were 
a shoal of huge jelly fish, great transparent things shaped 
like an open umbrella and about its size, having around 
the edge of the umbrella a beautiful purple fringe which 
causes you to recollect it if you incautiously touch it. 
On the occasion to which I refer I was standing on a 
headland in a place called Prussia Cove, in Mount’s Bay, 
when I saw a shoal, which I knew at once to be of 
mackerel, come out of a sandy bay there and go due west. 
