annually seek the Cornish seas, may be best conceived from the annual results of the fishery. By an average estimate made of the exports of these fish from the four ports of Fowey, Falmouth, Penzance, and St. Ives, from the years 1747 to 1756 inclusive, it appeared that the first town had shipped annually 1732 hogsheads; the second 14,631 and two-thirds of a hogshead; Penzance 12,149, and one-third; and St. Ives 1282; making in all 29,795 hogsheads; and this, exclusive of the immense home consumption, fish sold in the markets, and spread upon the land for manure. Great how

ever as this product may appear to be, of late years it has been coniderably larger, for in the year 1796 above 28,000 hogsheads were taken in the neighbourhood of Fowey alone, and more than 65,000 hogsheads through the county.† At present, indeed, the career of the fishery is sadly checked, by the want of a foreign market, though it is evident that were there a sale for the article, it would be to the full as profitable as ever, since the fish were never known to be more numerous on the coast than now.* The natural historian of Cornwall has

+ Of this quantity, Naples alone took 20,000 hogsheads. The greatest abundance. of fish ever known, particularly pilchards, were caught last week in Mount's Bay.

thus briefly enumerated the advantages which attend the pilchard fishery: a summary that places its national and provincial importance in a striking point of view. It employs a great number of men on the sea, training them thereby to naval affairs; it employs men, women, and children on land, in salting, pressing, washing, and cleaning them; in making boats, nets, ropes, casks, and all the articles depending on their construction; the poor are fed by the offals of the captures, the land with the refuse of the fish; the merchant finds the gains of commission and honest commerce, the fisherman the gains of the fish.* As the season of the fishing continues only a few weeks, the people employed in it are seldom engaged by the proprietors of the nets for a longer term than three months; but as the advan

Upwards of 10,000 hogsheads of the latter were landed at Turbot St Ives, and sold at 10d. the cart-load for manure. only fetched from 1d. to2d. per pound, and the inferior fish were not worth catching.-Bath Chron. Sept. 2, 1801. The state of the pilchard trade may be judged of from this circumstance. The fair price for a hogshead of pilchards is about three guineas. They fetch at present from 15s. to 18s. per hogshead. The former of these prices was the market one at Port Isaac, on the North coast, in the years 1807-8.

• Borlase's Natural History of Cornwall, 272.

tages to them are great during this time, they are enabled by its profits, like the harvest men of the east country, to lay by a comfortable sum for the winter support of their families out of their autumnal gains. Indeed it is necessary for the proprietor's to be as economical as possible in their arrangements, as the expences attending their speculations are very large. The seine, or great stop net, as it is called, 1320 feet long, and 84 deep, (the largest of their nets,) cannot be fitted out at Marazion under an expence of between 1100l. and 1200/.; to this must be added the cost of constant repair of many other smaller nets, boats, ropes, and tackle, all perishable articles; the building and support of extensive houses for salting the fish; and the wages of a countless host of men, women, and children, employed in that process. The business of this animated trade may be described in few words. As the season for the appearance of the pilchards approaches, particular people, at the wages of halfa-guinea a week, are stationed on commanding spots, to give notice of their arrival, a circumstance easily detected from the purple tinge which, as I have before mentioned, the shoals impart to the surface of the waters. These are called huers, from the hue or shout by which they notify to the fishermen the approach of the fish. In an instant, on

hearing the wished-for sound, all is bustle. The

*

seine-boat, properly fitted out, is pushed off, and

being directed to the spot, its net is let down to inclose the shoal. This it does, by forming a complete circle round them; when the two ends of the net are tied together. The whole is then rendered stationary by several anchors that are let out, and fixed to different parts of the seine. Within the wide extent which this enclosure embraces, a smaller net called the tuck, about 16 fathoms long, is introduced, capacious enough to contain 3 or 400 hogsheads, and having a bag at its bottom, from which the fish when once within it, cannot escape. The boats now approach, and being admitted into the seine through the two ends which had been tied together, they are loaded from the tuck net, the fish being dipped out with hand-buckets. In the mean time, the seine being thus gradually lightened, and the anchors taken up, it is dragged slowly and gently to shore, and on its arrival there, immediately prepared for a second capture. The fish being landed, and the home-market supplied, they are then

Three boats, and about twenty men, usually attend every seine. Mount's Bay has five seines. St. Ives, we were told, had fitted out fifty; but the cost of the outfit of each is not not more than between 6 and 700l. at that place.

carried to the cellars, where the bulkers, who are chiefly women, take them in hand. The name

ance.

tent.

which the Cornish people have given to their curinghouses, would convey to one who had never seen them, a very false idea of their structure and appearThe pilchard cellars are all above ground, and of a quadrilateral form, though their sides are not generally of uniform length. About seventy feet perhaps may be allowed for their average exThe center of this quadrangle is open to the sky. Three of its sides are covered by a double pent-house; the outer one designed to protect those who clean the fish; and the inner one to receive the fish after they are cleansed, and whilst they are under pressure for the extraction of their oil. The lofts of the pent-houses contain the seines, nets, and other tackle, when not employed in the fishery; and under the floor of the buildings are contrived vats, or receptacles for the oil which drains or is expressed form the fish. Being conveyed to these cellars on horses and in carts, the pilchards are cast in a heap in the center of the area, and then taken individually by the bulkers, who, having cleansed them, place them in strata of single layers on the floor of the inner pent-house, with a quantity of salt between each layer. The bulk, or pile, thus constructed, rises generally to the height of four or five