Pilcher or Pilchard, s. A fish like a herring.
The pilchard has a general likeness to the herring, but, when comparatively described, is essentially different. The body of the pilchard is less compressed, being thicker and rounder; the back is more elevated, the belly less sharp, the nose turns up, and, as well as the under jaw, is shorter, the dorsal fin is placed exactly in the centre of gravity, so that when taken up by it, the body preserves an equilibrium; that of the herring dips at the head. The scales of the pilchard adhere closely, whereas those of the herring very easily drop off; besides the pilchard is fatter, or more full of oil.
About the middle of July, the pilchards in vast shoals approach the Cornish coasts; the beginning of winter they disappear, a few returning after Christmas. Their winter retreat, and their motives for migrating, are the same with the herring. During summer, they affect a warmer latitude, no quantities being found on any of our coasts, except those of Cornwall; namely, from Fowey harbour to the Scilly Isles, between which places, for some weeks, the shoals keep shifting.
The appearance of the pilchard is known by the birds and larger fishes attendant upon them, and persons called Huers are placed on eminences, to point to the boats stationed off the land the course of the fish, by whose directions sometimes a bay of several miles’ extent is enclosed with their nets, called seines. By the first of James I. c. 23, fishermen are empowered to go on the grounds of others to hue, without being liable to action for trespass, which before occasioned frequent law-suits. The numbers that are taken at one shooting of the nets is astonishing. Upon the fifth of October, 1767, there were at one time inclosed in St. Ive’s Bay, 7,000 hogsheads, each cask containing 35,000 fish, in all 245,000,000.
Pint, s. Half a quart; in medicine, twelve ounces; a liquid measure.
Pintado, s. Guinea fowls: before rain, the pintados, called comebacks, squall more than usual, as do peacocks.—Foster.
Pintail Duck, Lea Pheasant, Cracker, Winter Duck (Anas acuta, Linn.; Le Canard à longue Queue, Buff.), s.
This handsome-looking bird is twenty eight inches in length, and thirty eight in breadth, and weighs about twenty four ounces. The bill is rather long, black in the middle, and blue on the edges; the irides reddish; the head and throat are of a rusty brown, mottled with small dark spots, and tinged behind the ears with purple; the nape and upper part of the neck are dusky, margined by a narrow white line, which runs down on each side, and falling into a broader stripe of the same colour, extends itself on the fore part as far as the breast; the rest of the neck, the breast, and the upper part of the back, are elegantly pencilled with black and white waved lines; the lower back and sides of the body are undulated in the same manner, but with lines more freckled, less distinct, and paler; the scapulars are long and pointed, each feather black down the middle with white edges; the coverts of the wings are ash-brown, tipped with dull orange; below these the wing is obliquely crossed by the beauty spot of glossy bronze purple green, with a lower border of black and white; this spangle is formed by the outer webs and tips of the middle quills; the rest of the quills are dusky. All the tail feathers are of a brown ash-colour, with pale edges, except the two middle ones, which are black, slightly glossed with green, considerably longer than the others, and end in a point; the belly and sides of the vent are white; under tail-coverts black; legs and feet small, and of a lead colour.
The female is less than the male, and her plumage is of a much plainer cast, all the upper parts being brown, with each feather margined more or less with white, inclining to red or yellow; the greater coverts and secondary quills are tipped with cream-colour and white which form a bar across the wings. The fore-part of the neck, the breast, and the belly to the vent, are of a dull white, obscurely spotted with brown. The tail is long and pointed, but the two middle feathers do not extend themselves beyond the rest, like those of the male.