The pilchard, which is a fish differing little from the herring, makes the coast of Cornwall its place of principal resort. Their arrival on that coast is soon proclaimed by their attendants, the birds, and the larger fishes; and the whole country prepare to take advantage of this treasure, providentially thrown before them. The natives sometimes enclose a bay of several miles extent with their nets, called seines. To direct them in their operations, there were, some years ago, several men placed on eminences near the shore, called huers, who, with brooms in their hands, gave signals where the nets were to be extended, and where the shoals of fishes lay: this they perceived by the colour of the water, which assumed a tincture from the shoals beneath. By these means, they sometimes take twelve or fifteen hundred barrels of pilchards at a draught: and they place them in heaps on the shore. It often happens that the quantity caught exceeds the salt, or the utensils for curing them; and then they are carried off to serve the purposes of manure. This fishery employs not only great numbers of men at sea, training them to naval affairs, but also numbers of women and children on land, in salting and curing the fish, in making boats, nets, ropes, and casks, for the purposes of taking or fitting them for sale. The poor are fed with the superfluity of the capture; the land is manured with the offals; the merchant finds the gain of 66 66 commission, and honest commerce; the fisherman a comfortable subsistence from his toil.— Ships," says Dr. Borlase, are often freight"ed hither with salt, and into foreign countries "with the fish, carrying off at the same time a part of our tin. The usual produce of the "number of hogsheads exported for ten years, "from 1747 to 1756 inclusive, amounted to near thirty thousand hogsheads each year; 66 every hogshead has amounted, upon an average, to the price of one pound, thirteen shil"lings and three pence. Thus the money paid "for pilchards exported, has annually amounted "to near fifty thousand pounds. 66 66 Whence these infinite numbers are derived, still remains obscure; but it will encrease our wonder to be told, that so small a fish as the stickleback, which is seldom above two inches long, and that one would think could easily find support in any water, is yet obliged to colonize, and leave its native fens in search of new habitations.-Once every seventh or eighth year, amazing shoals of these appear in the river Welland, near Spalding, in England, and go up the stream, forming one great column. They are supposed to be multitudes collected in some of the fens, till overcharged with numbers, they are periodically obliged to migrate. An idea may be had of their numbers, when we are in formed, that a man, employed by a farmer to take them, for the purpose of manuring his grounds, has got for a considerable time, four shillings a day, by selling them at a halfpenny a bushel. Thus we see the amazing propagation of fishes along our own coasts and rivers; but their numbers bear no proportion to the vast quantities found among the islands of the Indian ocean. The inhabitants of these countries are not under the necessity even of providing instruments for fishing; it is but going down to the shore, and there the fish are found in great numbers in the plashes, that still continue to have water in them. In some of these places, the quantity is so great, that they are left in shoals, on those swamps, dried up by the sun, and their putrefaction contributes to render the country unhealthful. The power of encreasing, in these animals, exceeds our idea, as it would, in a very short time, outstrip all calculation. A single herring, if suffered to multiply unmolested and undimi nished for twenty years, would shew a progeny greater in bulk than ten such globes as that we live upon; and the roe of the cod has been found to contain three millions of eggs, every one of which, if suffered to come to maturity, would have been a perfect fish. But happily, the balance of nature is exactly preserved; and their consumption is equal to their fecundity. For this reason, we are to consider the porpoise, the shark, or the cod-fish, not in the light of plun derers and rivals, but of benefactors to mankind. Without their assistance, the sea would soon become overcharged with the burthen of its own productions; and that element, which at present distributes health and plenty to the shore, would but load it with putrefaction, THE REMORA, OR SUCKING-FISH. THE Sucking-fishes are usually about a foot in length, have a naked, flat, an oily head, surrounded by a margin, and marked with several transverse streaks or grooves. The back is convex and black, and the belly white. From the time of Aristotle to the present day, this fish has been an object of constant attention and surprise. The ancient naturalists, not satisfied with imputing to it, wonderful qualities, and very extraordinary powers, proceeded still farther and were even absurd enough to believe that, small as it is, it had the power of arresting the progress of a ship in its fastest sailing, by adhering to its bottom. The following is the translation of an account given by one of their poets, of their extraordinary influence: The sucking-fish beneath, with secret chains, The master bids them give her all the sails, And will, unmov'd, nor winds nor waves obey; It inhabits most parts of the ocean, and is of ten found so strongly adhering to the sides of sharks and other fish, by means of the process on the upper part of its head, as not to be sepa rated without great difficulty. Five of them have been taken from the body of a single shark. St. Pierre says he has put some of them on an even surface of glass, from which he could not afterwards remove them. The Indians of Jamaica and Cuba formerly used the Sucking-fish in the catching of others, somewhat in the same manner as hawks are employed by a falconer in seizing birds. They kept them for the purpose, and had them regularly fed. The owner, on a calm morning, would carry one of them out to sea, secured to his canoe by a small but strong line, many fathoms in length; and the moment the creature |