IO 
call your attention to the fact that very much the same sort of 
thing happens in the case of a common snake killed, and 
dead beyond all question, but in which a muscular action 
goes on for hours, and gives rise to the common idea that 
a snake never dies until sunset. And I think our medical 
men can tell us that a very strong muscular action oc¬ 
casionally takes place in the human body after death from 
some particular convulsive diseases. 
Taking the season through, a mackerel is worth two pence 
at the boat’s side, and, with that fact before you, I leave 
you to judge how much the railway carrier and the fish¬ 
monger between them get out of the consumer. 
Of course the price varies from day to day. Within the 
last month I have known mackerel selling at the boat’s side 
for two and six pence per one hundred and twenty, or just 
one farthing per fish ; and a boat with a catch of eight 
hundred threw them all overboard rather than come into 
harbour and pay her quay dues. On the other hand I have 
seen them selling at the boat’s side at one shilling per fish. 
The mackerel fishery of Cornwall is a very old one. The 
fish itself was known in our seas very long ago, for it has a 
name in the old Cornish language (“ brithel ”), but it was 
but a small affair until railways opened up our markets in 
1859. I find that in 1808 we were sending mackerel from 
Penzance to Portsmouth in sailing cutters, but the record 
does not say in what condition they arrived there. It was 
probably fortunate for their owners that there were no 
Sanitary Inspectors about the markets in those days. 
At this time, the fleet employed on the fishery in Cornwall 
consists of about 400 sails of luggers of about 15 to 18 tons 
burden, excellent sea-boats (of which many models are to 
be seen on the Cornwall stall in the British Fisheries Gallery), 
costing, when the nets are on board, six hundred pounds 
