The fish will remain thus in salt, or, as the technical expression is, "in bulk," for five or six weeks. During this period, a quantity of oil, salt, and water drips from them into wells cut in the centre of the stone floor on which they are placed. After the oil has been collected and clarified, it will sell for enough to pay off the whole expense of the wages, food, and drink given to the "seiners"--perhaps, for some other incidental charges besides. The salt and water left behind, and offal of all sorts found with it, furnish a valuable manure. Nothing in the pilchard itself, or in connection with the pilchard, runs to waste--the precious little fish is a treasure in every part of him. After the pilchards have been taken out of "bulk," they are washed clean in salt water, and packed in hogsheads, which are then sent for exportation to some large sea-port--Penzance, for instance--in coast traders. The fish reserved for use in Cornwall, are generally cured by those who purchase them. The export trade is confined to the shores of the Mediterranean--Italy and Spain providing the two great foreign markets for pilchards. The home consumption, as regards Great Britain, is nothing, or next to nothing. Some variation takes place in the prices realized by the foreign trade--their average, wholesale, is stated to about fifty shillings per hogshead. Some idea of the almost incalculable multitude of pilchards caught on the shores of Cornwall, may be formed from the following _data_. At the small fishing cove of Trereen, 600 hogsheads were taken in little more than one week, during August 1850. Allowing 2400 fish only to each hogshead--3000 would be the highest calculation--we have a result of 1,440,000 pilchards, caught by the inhabitants of one little village alone, on the Cornish coast, at the commencement of the season's fishing! At considerable sea-port towns, where there is an unusually large supply of men, boats, and nets, such figures as those quoted above, are far below the mark. At St. Ives, for example, 1000 hogsheads were taken in the first three seine nets cast into the water. The number of hogsheads exported annually, averages 22,000. This year, 27,000 have been secured for the foreign markets. Incredible as these numbers may appear to some readers, they may nevertheless be relied on; for they are derived from trustworthy sources--partly from local returns furnished to me--partly from the very men who filled the baskets from the boat-side, and who afterward verified their calculations by frequent visits to the salting-houses.