Cornish pilchards are, no doubt, sufficiently well known to create some interest in the method by which they are caught. Some years back the fisheries were worked almost entirely by the "seine" net system, and had developed into a most flourishing industry; but, at present, owing principally to the large increase of drift-net boats which, in their more regular expeditions, tend to break up the "schools" or "shoals," the old picturesque way of catching them by the "seine" boats is more or less falling into desuetude. The glory and excitement of the pilchard fishing belongs, however, to the seine-net almost exclusively. For weeks the cliffs are patrolled by anxious watchers, and when once the red streak in the water shows to the practised eye the "school" slowly moving, the cry "heva" or "hubba" is heard shouted from one to another, and every man, woman, and child rushes to the beach. A volunteer colonel the writer once met touring about Cornwall with a camera had skilfully arranged a characteristic group of fishermen and lasses in a disused fish-cellar, and had carefully had an artistic background of nets, lobster-pots, &c., built up after some hours of trouble and difficulty, when, just as he was about to raise the cap, a tap at the little window, a cry of "hubba," and his group flew off like lightning out of the place. He never got them again. For many weeks they were all busy with the pilchards. Another visitor, not knowing the colloquial terms of the fisher-folk, was alarmed to hear his landlady, in great excitement, shout to a neighbour, "Shot at Cadgwith," and anxiously inquired whether anyone was hurt or killed. Though the fishing villages as a rule are in communication only through coaches, or more often carts, the news of the first catch rapidly flies; naturally each place anticipating the advent of the pilchards at any moment. [Illustration: LAUNCHING THE TUCK-BOAT.]