Herring Fishing.—To approach the fleet was a task of some difficulty. The nets, extended in interminable lines, were so frequent, that much skill was necessary to penetrate this hempen labyrinth, without fouling the back ropes. Warning cries directed our course, and with some delay we treaded the crowded surface, and, guided by buoys and puckawns, found ourselves in the very centre of the flotilla.
It was an interesting scene; momently the boats glided along the back ropes, which were supported at short intervals by corks, and at greater by inflated dog-skins, and raising the curtain network, which these suspended, the herrings were removed from the meshes, and deposited in the boats. Some of the nets were particularly fortunate, obliging their proprietors to frequently relieve them of the fish; while others, though apparently stretched within a few yards, and consequently in the immediate run of the herrings, were favoured with but a few stragglers; and the indolent fisherman had to occupy himself with a sorrowful ditty, or in moody silence watched the dark sea “like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks staying for waftage.”
The darkness of the night increased the scaly brilliancy which the phosphoric properties of these beautiful fish produce. The bottom of the boat, now covered with some thousand herrings, glowed with a living light, which the imagination could not create, and the pencil never imitate. The shades of gold and silvery gems were rich beyond description: and much as I had heard of phosphoric splendour before, every idea I had formed fell infinitely short of its reality.—Buffon—Wild Sports.
Herring Gull (Larus fuscus, Linn.) s. A genus thus characterised:—
This species weighs about thirty-three ounces; length twenty-three inches; bill yellow; on the lower mandible a reddish-orange spot; irides light yellow; orbits red. Head, neck, tail, and under parts, white; back, scapulars, and wing coverts, ash-colour; quill-feathers, dusky, the five first black towards their ends, with a white spot near the tip; legs pale flesh-colour.
Whether these immatured birds breed we cannot be certain, but are inclined to think they do, as we saw a great many of them intermixed with the perfect ones in the gullery on an island off St. David’s, where the nests were innumerable: they seemed equally clamorous with the others when disturbed. The nests were on the top of the island, amongst the grass and loose stones, composed of a small quantity of long dry grass, the eggs, which were two in number, of a dark olive-brown, with dusky blotches. Like others of the genus, this bird feeds indiscriminately on fish, and various other productions of the sea, particularly the star-fish. It is sometimes observed to trample the soft sand, by moving its feet alternately in the same place: for what purpose this singular action is intended, we cannot say, unless it is to force up the sand eels or other hidden prey, as the one mentioned above did the worms.—Montagu.
Hide, s. The skin of any animal, either raw or dressed; the human skin.
Hidebound, v. A horse is said to be hide-bound, when his skin sticks so hard to his ribs and back, that you cannot with your hand pull up or loosen the one from the other; in trees, being in the state in which the bark will not give way to the growth.
Highland, s. Mountainous region.