THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 17 



Herrings of different quality, such as full, lean (ijdel), 

 spawn-sick, and damaged (wrack), are to be sorted, and 

 each description packed in separate barrels, which are to 

 be kept asunder from the rest. But there are as yet no 

 separate brands for these several qualities ; and all 

 dealers, when disposing of any herring, are enjoined to 

 declare it to the buyer as either " full and sweet " or of 

 inferior quality. While at sea, herring already barrelled is 

 to be pickled, or moistened with sea-water every fortnight ; 

 whence the name of " pickle herring " (fekelharing) still 

 applied to the fish salted at sea. Herring caught in 

 the Y,* as being generally of inferior quality, is not 

 allowed to be salted and exported, but kept for home con- 

 sumption, and smoked to bucking when carried ashore. 

 This is perhaps the first evidence of the existence of the 

 smoked herring industry in these countries, and certainly 

 the first vestige of the Grand Fishery's curing monopoly 

 of later days. In order to enforce the rigid execution of 

 these rules, all fishing skippers are enjoined, before dis- 

 missing their crews, to make them declare upon oath before 

 the competent magistrate that no infraction whatever has 

 been committed during the voyage. 



This placard of Charles V. may, as already remarked, 

 be considered as the beginning of the era of working 

 regulations on herring fishery an era which has lasted 

 until twenty-five years ago, and witnessed the immense 

 prosperity of the business, but also its most profound 

 decline. The placard of 1519 has been often renewed, or 

 quoted in laws of later date as the original statute on the 

 subject. It is not, however, until a few years after its date 

 that anything like a connecting link between the several 



* An inlet of the Zuider Zee, formerly the only access to Amsterdam 

 by sea, now drained and traversed by a canal. 



