This delicious little fish, which the _gourmands_ of Paris so much delight in, when preserved in oil, and sent to their capital in those little tin boxes whose look must be _familiar to all who have frequented the Parisian breakfast-houses_" [but is now more familiar to all who have entered any grocers shop throughout the length and breadth of England], "is still more exquisite when eaten fresh on the shores which it frequents.

They are caught in immense quantities along the whole of the southern coast of Brittany, and on the western shore of Finisterre as far to the northward as Brest, which, I believe, is the northern limit of the fishery.

They come into season about the middle of June, and are then sold in great quantities in all the markets of southern Brittany at two, three, or four sous a dozen, according to the abundance of the fishery and the distance of the market from the coast.

I was told that the commerce in sardines along the coast from l'Orient to Brest amounted to three millions of francs annually." At the present day it must be enormously larger.

I remember well the exceeding plentifulness of the little fishes--none of them so large as many of those which now fill the so-called sardine boxes--when I was at Douarnenez in 1839.