boats required for bringing the fish to the beach may be seen sunk to the water’s edge with their burden, as successive bucketfuls are taken out of the nets and emptied into these conveyance vessels. To give the reader an idea of quantity, as connected with pilchard-fishing, I may state that it takes nearly three thousand fish to fill a hogshead. I have heard of a shoal being captured that took a fortnight to bring ashore. Ten thousand hogsheads of pilchards have been known to be taken in one port in a day’s time. The convenience of keeping the shoal in the water is obvious, as the fish need not be withdrawn from it till it is convenient to salt them. The fish are salted in curing-houses, great quantities of them being piled up into huge stacks, alternate layers of salt and fish. During the process of curing a large quantity of useful oil exudes from the heaps. The salting process is called “bulking,” and the fish are built up into stacks with great regularity, where they are allowed to remain for four weeks, after which they are washed and freed from the oil, then packed into hogsheads, and sent to Spain and Italy, to be extensively consumed during Lent, as well as at other fasting times. The hurry and bustle at any of the little Cornwall ports during the manipulation of a few shoals of pilchards must be seen, the excitement cannot be very well described. The pilchard is, or rather it ought to be, the _Sardinia_ of commerce, but its place is usurped by the sprat, or garvie as we call it in Scotland, and thousands of tin boxes of that fish are annually made up and sold as sardines. I have already alluded to the sprat, so far as its natural history is concerned. It is a fish that is very abundant in Scotland, especially in the Firth of Forth, where for many years there has been a good sprat-fishery. We do not now require to go to France for our sardines, as we can cure them at home in the French style. The sprat-fishery for sardine-making is still, however, a considerable maritime industry on the coast of France. In 1864 about 75,000 barrels of sprats were taken on the coast of Brittany, besides those sold fresh and the quantities done up in oil as sardines. The process of curing with oil is as follows:—The fish must be well washed in sea-water, after which they are sprinkled with clean salt. The next process is to cut off the heads of the fish, and take away the intestines, etc., after which they are again rinsed in the sea-water, and hung up or laid out to dry in order to beautify. After this they are placed for a very brief period in a pan of boiling oil, which completes the cure. Before being packed in the neat little tin boxes in which we find them, the sardines are laid down on a grating, in order to let the oil drain off—the finishing process being the exposure of the box in a steam-chest for such a period as the curer deems necessary. According to my informant, a thorough cure is effected when