Page:Cornwall; Cambridge county geographies.djvu/104

 88 CORNWALL 17. Fisheries. If mining be a decayed industry in Cornwall, that of fishing shows no diminution. In an old book of natural history published in 1776, the principal fishery of pil- chards is described. "Pilchards appear in vast shoals off the Cornish coasts about the middle of July, and disappear at the beginning of winter ; though a few of them some- times return again after Christmas. The fishing employs a great many men on the sea, and men, women, and children on land, in salting, pressing, washing, and clean- ing ; in making boats, nets, ropes, casks; and all the tradesmen depending on their construction and sale. The usual quantities exported each year, for ten years, from 1746 to 1756 inclusive, on the average is as follows: Fowey has exported 1732 hogsheads annually; Falmouth 14,631; Penzance and Mounts Bay 12,149; St Ives 1282; in all amounting to 29,795 hogsheads." And the same writer thus describes the fish. "The pilchard greatly resembles the herring, but differs from it in some particulars ; it is a third less, and the body is proportion- ably broader : it has a black spot near the upper corner of the gills, and the belly is not so sharp. It has no teeth, either in the jaws, the tongue, or the palate." It is now held that the pilchard is identical with the sardine, but in a different stage of growth. The pilchards are taken generally from the middle of August to the middle of September, when large "schools" are seen coming up the Channel. Each fishing station