International Fisheries Exhibition 
LONDON, 1883 
Conference on 13TH July, 1883. 
Sir JOHN St. Aubyn, Bart., M.P., in the Chair. 
The CHAIRMAN, in introducing Mr. Cornish, said he had 
come at the request of the Executive Committee to tell 
them something about a subject on which most people 
knew comparatively little. Whilst almost everybody in 
the room was more or less intimately acquainted with the 
mackerel, there were very few, except those who lived in 
Cornwall, on the west coast of Ireland, and on the coast 
of Brittany, who knew anything about the pilchard ; but 
they might take it on his authority that the pilchard was a 
most excellent fish when eaten fresh, and when preserved, 
either after the manner of sardines in oil, or salted for 
exportation, it formed a most nutritious and excellent 
article of diet. The Cornish fishermen were employed to 
a very large extent both in the mackerel and pilchard 
fisheries, and went out a considerable distance from the 
shore in quest of these fish. They met with the mackerel 
at spring-time at a distance varying from close in-shore, to 
sixty, seventy, or one hundred miles out, and twenty-four 
hours after they were caught, people in London were in a 
position to judge of the result by seeing the mackerel on 
the slabs of fishmongers. A pilchard was a different sort 
