158 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



seven-eighths of an inch, the general size being only one-halfof an inch. 1 

 As the herring during the old fisheries were persecuted by fish of prey, 

 even in the inlets, smaller meshes were necessary to increase the strength 

 of the net and to prevent the herring from sticking fast in the meshes, 

 and this even when the fishing was going on during the daytime, and 

 help could easily be secured. 



When Professor Nilsson, more than forty years ago, made his obser- 

 vations on the salt-water fish of the west coast of Scandinavia, the 

 nets on the southern coast had the same sized meshes as at present, i. e., 

 18 meshes to the yard, 2 and they were, therefore, about the same size as 

 that prescribed for the small-herring nets by the royal ordinance of July 

 19, 1872, while their meshes are somewhat narrower than those pre- 

 scribed by the law of December 29, 1857, for the fisheries in the Liin- 

 fjord, (Denmark.) In the nets used in the southern portion of the 

 central coast, where the small-herring begins to be of importance for 

 the fisheries, there were, thirty years ago, 20 meshes to the yard, and 

 this is still the case. 3 On the northern coast, near Fjellbacka, where the 

 nets are chiefly adapted for catching small-herring, the meshes, in con- 

 sequence of a royal ordinance of 1833, are made very narrow, ''scarcely 

 an inch from knot to knot." * This does not mean, as has sometimes been 

 supposed, that the meshes scarcely measured an inch ; but that the dis- 

 tance from knot to knot, when stretched, was scarcely an inch. In 

 olden times, the word " mesh," when used in Bohusliin, always meant 

 the stretched mesh ; and this meaning has been retained by Ekstrom in his 

 often quoted "Practical Essay." The Fjellbacka nets are, therefore, not 

 any narrower than they were forty years ago, but they are now gener- 

 ally less deep and long. If the nets had had meshes measuring scarcely 

 an inch, herring from 3 to 6 inches long, as well as small-herring, could 

 not have been caught in them to any considerable extent ; 5 and the 

 complaint so often heard that the nets had meshes too narrow would 

 have been unfounded. 6 The report made at the Stromstad meeting that 

 the meshes " are so large that the' thumb can scarcely be pushed 

 through," 7 proves that the herring-nets used in that portion of the north- 

 ern coast were not narrower than the Fjellbacka nets, nor had they 

 larger meshes than those used on the southern coast. 



The method of using the nets in former times is supposed to be very 



1 Fasch and Berg, Memorial and Petition, pp. 28, 29. 

 8 Niteson, Reports on the Herring-Fisheries, p. 64. 



3 EJestrom, Practical Essay, p. 20, note 2, p. 107. (The information that the nets 

 should be from 15 to 20 fathoms deep is based on a mistake of the printer.) 



4 Report on the Herring-Fisheries, p. 107 fr. 28. 



6 Reports on the Herring-Fisheries, pp. 18, 64-66, 69, 136, 157. 



*Nils8on, Reports on the Herring-Fisheries, pp. 18, 64, 80, 143. Scandinavian Fauna, 

 IV, p. 507, 514. Sundevall, Reports on the Herring-Fisberies, p. 156. Wright, W. von, 

 Reports on the Herring-Fisheries, p. 174. 



7 Reports on the Herring-Fisheries, p. 91 fr. 36. 



