History of Wonderful Fishes (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1820 Excerpt: ...a comfortable subsistence from his toil.--" Ships," says Dr. Borlase, " are often freight" ed hither with salt, and into foreign countries " with the fish, carrying off at the same time a " part of our tin. The usual produce of the " number of hogsheads exported for ten years, " from 1747 to 1756 inclusive, amounted to " near thirty thousand hogsheads each year; " every hogshead has amounted, upon an aver" age, to the price of one pound, thirteen shil" lings and three pence. Thus the money paid " for pilchards exported, has annually amounted " to near fifty thousand pounds. Whence these infinite numbers are derived, still remains obscure; but it will encrease our wonder to be told, that so small a fish as the stickleback, which is seldom above two inches long, and that one would think could easily find support in any water, is yet obliged to colonize, aud leave its native fens in search of new habitations.--Once every seventh or eighth year, amazing shoals of these appear in the river WelIand, near Spalding, in England, and go up the stream, forming one great column. They are supposed to be multitudes collected in some of the fens, till overcharged with numbers, they are periodically obliged to migrate. An idea may be had of their numbers, when we are in formed, that a man, -employed by a farmer to take them, for the purpose of manuring bis grounds, has got for a considerable time, four shillings a day, by selling them at a halfpenny a bushel. Thus we see the amazing propagation of fishes along our own coasts and rivers; but their numbers bear no proportion to the vast quantities found among the islands of the Indian ocean. The inhabitants of these countries are not under the necessity eve...