In support of the individuality of the sprat, the serrated belly and relative position of the fins are dwelt upon, together with the instance detailed by Mr. Mitchell, the Belgian consul at Leith, who exhibited a pair of sprats, having the roe and milt fully developed.
On the other hand, the abundance of the sprat has been adduced as a reason for its being the young herring. In addition to this, anatomists declare their anatomy shows no difference but size. "As to the serrated belly," says Bertram, "we may look on that as we do on the back of a child's frock, namely, as a provision for growth." If this is so, Dr. Bertram supplies material at once for thought and legislation. "The slaughter of sprats," he says, "is as decided a case of killing the goose with the golden eggs as the grilse slaughter carried on in our salmon rivers." But Mr. Bertram here overlooks a fact of which any one may convince himself, namely, that young herrings are caught without the serrated belly; nay, the curer's purchase is regulated by the sprat's rough, and the herring's smooth belly.
Fig. 385. The Pilchard (Clupea pilchardus).
The Pilchard, Clupea pilchardus (Fig. 385), sometimes called the gipsy herring, visits our coasts all the year round. It was at one time thought, as the herring was, to be migratory, but, like that fish, it is now found to be a native of our own seas, and a constant inhabitant of our shores. It has been known to spawn in May, but the usual time is October, and authorities like Mr. Couch think it breeds only once a year. Its visit to shallow water causes immense excitement; persons watch night and day from the lofty cliffs along the Cornwall coast, and the watchers (locally called "huers") signal the boats at sea beneath them the moment they see indications of the approach of a shoal. Mr. Wilkie Collins gives an animated picture of the "huer:" "A stranger in Cornwall, taking his first walk along the cliffs in August, could not advance far without witnessing what would strike him as a very singular and even alarming phenomenon. He would see a man standing on the extreme edge of a precipice just over the sea, gesticulating in a very remarkable manner, with a bush in his hand, waving it to the right and to the left, brandishing it over his head, sweeping it past his feet; in short, acting the part apparently of a maniac of the most dangerous description. It would add considerably to the stranger's surprise if he were told that the insane individual before him was paid for flourishing the bush at the rate of a guinea a week. And if he advanced a little, so as to obtain a nearer view of the madman, and observed a well-manned boat below turning carefully to the right and left, as the bush turned, his mystification would probably be complete, and his ideas as to the sanity of the inhabitants would be expressed with grievous doubt.
"But a few words of explanation would make him alter his opinion. He would learn that the man was an important agent in the pilchard fishery of Cornwall, that he had just discovered a shoal swimming towards the land, and that the men in the boats were guided by his gesticulations alone in their arrangements for securing the fish on which so many depend for a livelihood."
The pilchard, the young of which is believed to be the sardine of commerce, where its place is not usurped by the sprat, is sometimes taken in the Channel, on the coasts of Brittany and Cornwall, and in the Mediterranean, and on the coast of Sardinia, whence its commercial name. In Brittany floating-nets are employed. The fishing is conducted in boats, each carrying five men; hundreds of these boats may sometimes be seen engaged at the same time three or four leagues from the coast, the nets being only drawn when they are fully charged, when the fish are arranged bed upon bed in osier baskets, each boat returning habitually to port when it has secured twenty-five thousand fishes. The fishery extends over five or six months, the produce being about six hundred millions of sardines.
The Basque fishermen employ a net in the form of a sack, with rings at each corner.