PILCHARD LAW

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fish gazing at the stars through a hole in the middle of the crust. They make an excellent breakfast-dish when quite fresh, split open and grilled. The pilchard is also an excellent breakfast-dish when "marinaded," or baked with vinegar, spices, and sweet bay-leaves, eaten cold. In this form it keeps a long time. The squeaking noise when the fish are pressed in bulk in the vats, due to the bursting of the air-bladders, is called "crying for more," and is regarded as a good omen—that more fish will soon be brought in to keep them company.

The pressing stones, pieces of granite rock, often rounded, with an iron staple or handle in each for lifting, and weighing quite a hundredweight, placed on the loose boards laid over the fish in the vats, in order to squeeze them and express the oil, when not in use in the pilchard season, are stored on the floors of the cellars. The advent of a good haul of fish is presaged by a commotion among these stones, which are said to roll about and make a noise spontaneously, anticipatory of their shortly being required once more for service.

The pilchard fishery was formerly always specially protected, and stern local laws enacted for conducting it in accordance with established rules and customs. To unscientifically plunge into a shoal, or "school," and frighten the fish away was not permitted. So far back as 1684, in the civic records of St. Ives, I came across the significant entry in the Borough Accounts, "Spent 6th Novemb' at Ed. Pryors att a meetinge of the Aldermen to suppres the pilchard driveinge 3s. 6d." This ancient industry has also been the subject of testamentary bequest. John Knill, of St. Ives, who died in 1811, left several bequests for the benefit of that borough, where he had resided for upwards of twenty years, and amongst others the sum of £5 to be paid periodically "to the woman, married or single, inhabitant of St. Ives or otherwise, who shall by the Mayor, Collector of Customs and clergyman be deemed to be the best curer and packer of pilchards for exportation." The same benefactor similarly left £5 to the best female knitter of fishing nets.

We can therefore quite understand the curious Cornish toast, "Fish, Tin, Copper," and the significance of the sequence of the three staple industries. Fish pre-eminently first. Cornwall was never an agricultural county.

CHAPTER VII

CLIMATE-PENZANCE-SIR HUMPHRY DAVY

OUCHING the temperature of this countie," says Speed, that wonderful old geographer who produced his map of Cornwall in 1610, "the aire thereof is cleansed as with bellows of the billows that ever worke from off her environing seas, where- thorow it becommeth pure and subtill, and is made thereby very healthful, but withall so piercing and sharpe, that it is apter to preserve than to recover health. The spring is not so early as in the more easterne parts: yet the Summer, with a temperate heat recompenceth his slow fostering of the fruits, with their most kindly ripening. The Autumne bringeth a somewhat late harvest; and the Winter, by reason of the Seas warme breath maketh the cold milder than elsewhere. Notwithstanding that Countrey is much subject to stormie blasts, whose violence hath freedome from the open waves to beat upon the dwellers at land, leaving many times their houses uncovered." The tyrant, indeed, of our coasts, says Tonkin," is the West and North-West Winds."

No doubt, from its being nearly surrounded by sea, the atmosphere of Cornwall, particularly the Land's End district, is moist, but the mildness occasioned by the same circumstances balances the inconvenience. Dr. C. Barham says that "Penzance, and indeed the whole peninsular portion of Penwith, is under this marine influence, which may be regarded as almost a fixed quantity, the temperature of the surrounding sea only varying between 60 degrees in summer and 50 degrees in winter."1

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"Though the hills of the inland parts," says C. S. Gilbert in his History of Cornwall (1817), " and the lofty cliffs that breast its surrounding oceans intercept the mists, dews, and clouds, and bring them down in frequent, though not very

1 Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, No. XXI, p. 287.

THE GULF STREAM

55 heavy rains (which are provincially called coasting rains), so that upon the whole, the earth is no where better watered than in this county, yet the constant variation and violence of the winds, which assault it from every quarter, and particularly from the south and west, added to those sudden gusts, called flaws, which pass towards the sea, either over or between the hills, prevent the stagnation of the air, purify it from noxious vapours arising from the operations of refining ores, and render it perhaps the most healthy county in England, as the long lives of its inhabitants sufficiently prove." (Vol. I, p. 85.)

Mr. Whitley has given long and careful attention to the climate of Cornwall, and his words thereon are worth quoting:

"A Canadian would think there was no summer, and say there was no winter; a Spaniard would wonder what had become of the sun; and a Peruvian would think it always rained.

"The month of January at Penzance is as warm as at Madrid, Florence, and Constantinople; and July is as cool as at St. Petersburg in that month. The seasons appear to mingle like the interlacing of the warm and cold waters on the edge of the Gulf Stream; and along our coast-line in January night and day have hardly a distinctive temperature, the mean difference being scarcely 4°. There is no country in the world with a climate so mild and equable as the south-west of England, if we except the south-west of Ireland, where this peculiarity is intensified.

"The cause is now well understood. The Atlantic Ocean on the west is an immense reservoir of warm water, fed and heated by the Gulf Stream, so that around the Cornish lands in the depth of winter the temperature of the surface-water is seldom lower than 46°; and out at sea, beyond the influence of the land, the water is much warmer. The air pressed on its surface partakes of its temperature, and this warm air is swept by the prevailing westerly winds over the land, imparting to it the heat which was generated in and conveyed from the torrid zone. Let the cold be ever so intense in winter, the westerly wind will drive it back, and day after day the thermometer will stand at 50°.

"There is a magic touch and a mighty power above this

brave west wind, which in winter we should thankfully acknowledge. In the middle of December, 1859, the cold from the north-east had coated Cornwall with snow, and loaded the trees and hedgerows with masses of glittering crystals. A falling barometer indicated that the generous hero of the west was approaching; his first blast was cold and chilly; but on, on, roaring and groaning, he came; sighing through the trees and hedgerows, and the snow fell in heavy lumps from the boughs. From the western sides of hills, and from the more exposed brows of the land, the snow melted rapidly away, and so effective was his influence that lines of temperature might almost be drawn on the delicately shaded surface. Within twenty-four hours the white mantle of winter was gone, and the emerald green of spring returned, except that here and there were left some patches of snow which had skulked under the eastern side of a hedge; and the thermometer ranged from 50° at night to 54° by day.

"But in summer admiration changes into dislike. Fair weather may come out of the north,' but the tyrant of the west rolls in, cloud on cloud, till the sun is obscured by masses of vapour which, day after day, no ray of his can pierce; then long pendent streams of condensing vapour float over the languishing ears of corn, or descend in heavy rain to retard and injure the harvest. The sun may be a monarch in the desert, where the earth is fire and the sun is flame,' but in Cornwall we often view him as the 'dim discrowned god of day,' and long to feel more of his vivifying beams, gilding the fading corn and swelling the half-ripe fruit."1

Carew says, "For health, eighty and ninety years of age is ordinary in every place; and in most persons accompanied with an able use of the body and his senses. One Polzew, lately living, reached into 130; a kinsman of his to 112; one Beauchamp to 106; yea, Brawne the beggar, a Cornishman by wandering (for I cannot say by inhabitance), though Irish by birth, outscored a hundred winters, by I wot not

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'Development of the Agricultural Resources of Cornwall," Bath and West of England Agricultural Journal, Vol. IX, Part 2. Cf. Mr. Whitley's "Prize Essay on the Climate of the British Islands," Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 1850.