Sprats cured, red-herring-fashion, are excellent for breakfast, and I think there are few palates, even the most fastidious, which would not relish them. To cook fresh-caught sprats, take three or four dozen of the largest-sized “drift-net” ones and broil them over a very clear fire, serving them up with melted butter and cayenne pepper; or they are excellent floured, and served whitebait-fashion, with cayenne and lemon.
The sprat when cured is often palmed off for the anchovy, but it possesses this peculiar property, which may always serve as a guide to the unwary—viz., the bones of the sprat do not dissolve when it is prepared as a condiment, whilst those of the anchovy do. Nine-tenths of the fish sold as “sardines” are neither more nor less than sprats preserved in oil. The real sardine is, I believe, a fish peculiar to the Bay of Naples: at any rate, the Neapolitan sardines are the best.
I have endeavoured to ascertain the probable yearly weight of sprats consumed in London, but can obtain no reliable data. Making allowance for the variation of price in the market, I find that the average money-value, taking one year with another, of the sprats sold in the metropolis is 25,000l. Taking one penny per pound as about the price usually given by the working-classes, our readers will be able to form some idea of the astounding trade driven by the sprat-dealers. The first sprats of the season taken in the Thames belong, as I have said, to the Lord Mayor; and there was, I believe, in the time of Henry VIII., a royalty on them, as there is at the present day on sturgeon.
The sprat-trade, though it is brisk at Billingsgate whilst the short season lasts, is carried on mostly by costermongers, who retail the fish on barrows in the streets. Most of these men vary their trade according to the season; selling, for instance, fruit and vegetables in the summer, sprats and other fish in the autumn, nuts and oranges in the winter, early flowers in the spring, and so forth. They are as a rule a very improvident class of men, rarely saving, though often earning (for their station) large weekly amounts. Of course there are some honourable exceptions. I must, however, do them the justice to affirm, that if treated with civility, they are ready, with scarcely an exception, to afford every information in their power concerning their trade to those who, like myself, have had occasion to go not unfrequently amongst them.
Sprats are singularly “taking” baits for most kinds of sea-fish. In my experience, which has been a rather extensive one, there is no bait equal to a sprat for taking codfish, as I have mentioned, en passant, in one of my former papers.[1] The mackerel also is especially fond of sprats; and where mackerel much abound, as for instance on the Cornish coasts, the poor sprats are to be seen often flying out of the water in showers at the approach of the mackerel shoal. It is not often, however, that sprats are found inside the mackerel; as that fish, like the salmon, immediately it finds itself in danger of being caught, disgorges the entire contents of its stomach. The river-perch has the same habit of disgorging; and of all fish, I think the trout and cod are oftenest found to contain a great variety of food. Both cod and trout in the death-agony will throw up the greater portion of the food in their stomachs, but the salmon and perch will do so as soon as they feel the hook. A month since I hooked a perch, which, as soon as he came to the top of the water, “blew” out three or four minnows. The perch does this in such a curious fashion, that after being hooked, he will sometimes push the bait which has enticed him a good six inches up the gut-line, as if disgusted with being ensnared.
Sprats taken as sprats vary much in size, which of course, supposing them to be the young of the herring, is easily accounted for, as they would go on growing to the full herring size. I have seen them six or eight inches long, taken in the drift-nets. It is my opinion that such so-called sprats are the young herrings about two-thirds grown, and those of the early spawning. I take the smaller sprats to be the later-spawned herrings. We have so much to learn about fish and their ways, that even those of my readers who may differ from me on this point will not, I am confident, like to contradict me. Until very lately, young salmon in their “parr” state were supposed to be a distinct species; and I have above instanced the wonderful transition-state of the frog, as proving that in Nature’s book there are far more mysterious changes than our philosophy ever dreams of. At present I will only add that this short paper was designed, not for the purpose of opening a controversy, but with the sole aim of affording a few moments’ amusement to those who may think it worthy of perusal.
“A RETROSPECT.”
I.
I saw her gathering roses on a lawn,
And wondered what a gift the gods had given:
Her cheek, the hue of a fair summer dawn,
Her eyes, the calm of even.
II.
I saw her next upon a holiday,
And won her dear love on yon sunny crest:
While golden clouds grew crimson, crimson grey,
And the winds sank to rest.
III.
Later I saw, with these tear-drownèd eyes,
Or in celestial vision seemed to see,
How some bright angel from the blessed skies
Had come to wed with me.
IV.
One year—and then I saw a baby dead,
On the white pillow where she, dying, lay,
And seemed a-listening, till her little maid
Might call her soul away.
V.
I’m now alone; but sometimes in the night
Around my head familiar voices roam,
And win me, with a mystical delight,
To dream I am at home.
- ↑ Vol. VII. p. 597.
