Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/611

. 21, 1863.] Knight and Co. in 1803, and his subsequent suicide, what is to prevent him suborning some clever fellow to personate the forger? At the right moment this pretended ghost blows the light out, and slips away by the back-door. That banging of the back-door is fatal to the supernatural theory: a real spectre would have disappeared silently.”

To this I will rejoin but little. Whichever view you adopt, the matter is surrounded with difficulties: but this I will say, that if Jack Toombs had seen that Being as I saw him, with his head thrown back, he would not have been in a condition to theorise so dispassionately. At any rate, I have had enough of it. My nerves are completely shattered; so I purpose resigning my secretaryship, and joining the German Turnverein. Gymnastics will, I trust, make me myself again.

the comparative insignificance of the sprat as a member of the fish-tribe, its importance, as an article of food to the poorer classes of society, is so great that I may, I hope, be pardoned for including it in my list of fish for special consideration.

Sprats, as most people are aware, are gregarious fish; and the amount of them taken, during the brief period of the sprat-season, is so enormous as entirely to defy calculation. The fishery is carried on to a vast extent on all parts of the British coast, and affords a temporary livelihood to some thousands of people. Sprats are caught in the greatest abundance in very thick foggy weather, for which reason the month of November is the best month for their capture. The season commences properly on the 9th of November, and terminates, or should terminate, at Christmas. The first sprats taken in the Thames, at the commencement of the season, belong, by ancient right, to the Lord Mayor; and a dish of these little fish is, I believe, always placed on the table at the annual banquet which is given to celebrate the installation into office of the chief magistrate of the City of London.

Sprats, like flounders, have the peculiar faculty of thriving in either salt or fresh water, and may be taken as far up the river as Blackwall and even London Bridge.

I shall not here re-open the much-disputed question as to whether sprats are really a genus per se, or whether they are in fact young herrings; but I will just make a few remarks on the probability of the latter being the case. In the first place, it is a noteworthy fact that when the herrings disappear the sprats appear; and this would seem to indicate that they are the young brood, some two or three months old, left behind by the parent-fish. Further, though it is asserted that sprats are taken with the roes in them (as a proof that they constitute a distinct species), I never yet saw one with a fully-formed roe; nor does it follow, by any means, that the fish, even if they did contain roes, would be capable of renewing their species. Young nestling-birds of the hen-sex contain ova from the time of their being hatched; but no one would think of arguing from that fact that callow birds could possibly propagate their kind. Again, much stress has been laid on the trivial fact that the belly of the sprat is serrated and rough, whilst that of the herring is smooth. This roughness is probably merely a projection of the ventral bones, which tones down as the fish increase in size, much in the same manner as many an angular-elbowed “Miss in her teens” does.

I might, if I would, bring forward many arguments to prove that the sprat is neither more nor less than the young herring, but such is not my object at present. I may, however, be permitted to add, that when we know that such a creature as a tadpole becomes a frog, and recollect the changes of the salmon in its “parr,” “smolt,” and “grilse” states of existence, we have very good ground for supposing the sprat to be no exception to that universal rule of change in growth which is common to the young of all the species of creation, even to man himself. With these few and, as I think, not inappropriate remarks I will pass on to my subject.

Sprats are caught in two distinctly different ways—viz., by the “drift” net and by the “stow” net. When the former method (which is far the best) is adopted, the nets hang down perpendicularly, as in herring-fishing, and each little silvery victim is secured in a separate mesh by its gills. These fish must of course be the finest and best, as only sprats of a certain size could be secured in the mesh; and, moreover, the fish thus taken are not dragged about and bruised, as they are when the “stow-net” is used. The “stow” much resembles the trawl-net it its operation, and is used to drag the fishing-ground in semicircular sweep. In this net all-sized sprats are caught, some several inches long, and others no larger than whitebait; and of course some amount of sorting is entailed. Sprats caught thus are sold cheaply, at so much per pound or measure; but the “drift-net” sprats, which are very fine, are sold at so much per hundred (generally from 4d. to 8d.), and are reserved for the best markets. The sprat-fishing is pursued by night, and the boats fish close along the shore. Any visitor to the sea-side in the month of November may, by giving a small gratuity to the “skipper” of a sprat-boat, obtain the privilege of accompanying him; and it is a pretty and curious sight to see the heaps of glittering fish tumbled out of the nets into the small boats employed in the fishery.

Sprats of course are very seldom indeed seen on the tables of the better classes, except when the partakers of them happen to be dining or supping quite en famille. The sprat, like the herring and plaice, is essentially a poor man’s fish; and it is quite impossible to overestimate its enormous utility as an article of food to the labouring-classes. The sprat-season is looked forward to with far greater anxiety by the poorest sort of Irish than is the venison-season by the epicure; in fact, but for the sprat, many thousands would often go dinnerless.