17 
A boat appears in the offing, and signals her number and the 
number of fish she has. The auctioneer announces both, 
and, if the bidding is slack, chucks a stone into the air. 
The buyers have to bid before that stone falls. If a bid 
comes, another stone is chucked up, and so on. And as the 
boats do not all arrive at the same time, this method 
conduces to much speculation. 
Sometimes the fleet puts into Scilly, and sends the catch 
to the mainland by steamer. Then the market is steadier, 
because the total of the catch is known by telegraph ; but 
scenes of wild excitement take place. The early boats 
unload and pack their fish and stow the baskets on board 
the steamer, but the late boats crowd round the steamer, 
which is a mail boat and bound to time, and simply unload 
their fish on to her decks. These fish are packed on the 
way over by men working against time. I came over in the 
steamer once when she had more than 60,000 fish on board, 
and I watched the packing of more than 15,000 of them, 
which had been thrown loose upon her deck, after which I 
considered I could say that I knew mackerel when I saw it. 
It was on a hot summer’s day, and as the steamer rolled to 
the Land’s End seas, the packers were constantly ankle- 
deep in blood and slush. 
One result of this investigation was the certain conclusion 
that the “ scribbled mackerel ” and “ dotted mackerel ” of 
Couch (British Fishes) were only accidental varieties of the 
common mackerel. 
Strictly speaking the mackerel is not a migratory fish. 
It is in our seas all the year round, but in the season which 
I have mentioned—February to June—it, for some unknown 
purpose, crowds from the deep sea inshore. By day, during 
this season, it swims in scools or shoals, and by night it 
makes a formation in loose order, probably for the purpose 
[3] C 
