All the most favourable stations are occupied during the proper season of the year by large boats, having nets on board measuring four hundred and forty yards in length by twenty-seven yards in breadth, capable therefore of covering nearly two and an half statute acres. These nets are provided with very heavy weights at one of their sides, so as to sink them firmly on the ground, and with large corks to make them buoyant on the other. Two large boats and one smaller, as an attendant, are appropriated to each net; and when a shoal is discovered approaching, by a well-known change of colour and a ripple on the water, these boats, sometimes directed also by signals from the shore, move in opposite directions, extending the immense net to intercept the fish, and then to close it behind them. In this way a quantity sufficient to fill a thousand casks, after being pressed, have been frequently secured at one time, and on some occasions much more. The casks are hogsheads of fifty-four gallons, and contain about two thousand five hundred pilchards, so that the thousand hogsheads make two millions and a half secured by one net. The fish are taken out of the sea by raising them to the surface of the water in smaller nets, used within the great net forming an artificial pond; and finally they are dipped up in baskets. The first net, called a seyne, frequently remaining in its original position for several days, or perhaps gently slided towards the shore. Pilchards are preserved for exportation in the following manner: they are laid in regular heaps along the sides of walls sheltered by roofs to a height easily reached, and to a depth suited to the ordinary length of the arm, where they are almost concealed by the great quantity of salt strewed with them; three hundred and thirty-six pounds, or three great hundred weight of salt, being allowed for each pressed hogshead. In this state they remain thirty-six days, while oil continually oozing from them is received in pits; they are then rinced in water, and laid with great care in casks made purposely with open joints, where they receive a strong pressure through the medium of a long beam and weights; more oil is then collected, and the casks, closed up, are fitted for sale. Nine of these packages, independent of the wood, are said to weigh two tons; so that in their final state, the quantity of a thousand hogsheads, not unfrequently caught at one time, must weigh above two hundred and twenty tons. The quantity of oil is very considerable, varying from two to five gallons from each hogshead, but of inferior quality. Pilchards thus cured are called fumados, which seems to imply their having been originally smoked like red herrings; their chief consumption takes place in Spain and Italy. The pilchards used for home consumption are invariably picked; these are opened and washed, and then rubbed with salt, about seven pounds to the hundred, and preserved in jars or troughs.