BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 237 



coast of BohuslaD are to be carried on "with floating' nets, care should be 

 taken to bring about the conditions on which the success of such fish- 

 eries will absolutely depend; and, thanks to Professor Sinitt's uncalled- 

 for interference with the Bohuslan sea-fisheries, this is either delayed 

 or hindered. Owing to the Berlin Exposition and utterly resultless ex- 

 periments with floating nets, the introduction of improved methods of 

 preparing herrings, wbich was essential for the future success of the 

 Bohuslan herring industries, had to be deferred. We have also to 

 thank the professor that special laws for these industries, by which in 

 time they might have been properly regulated, are still among the 

 things to be desired. 



As the new settler first cultivates the most promising part of his 

 ground, and afterwards, when he is better prepared, the poor ground, 

 so also does the fisherman in choosing the method for a new fishery. 

 The easy, cheap, and promising mod^s of fishing are taken in hand first, 

 and the less promising or more expensive methods are only applied in 

 proportion as the fisheries begin to pay better. Less profitable appa- 

 ratus must also, when the fisheries again become more productive, give 

 way before profitable apparatus, which principally determines the prices 

 during the entire fisheries. It thus happened in the eighteenth century 

 in Bohuslan, when the fishermen who came to our coast from Schoner 

 had soon to exchange their nets for those in general use on the Bohus- 

 lan coast, as otherwise their fisheries would hardly have paid them for 

 their trouble. As Professor Smitt has abandoned his former assertion 

 relative to the uusuitableness for salting of the herring caught according 

 to the present method, and has voluutarily declared that the Bohuslan 

 herrings, as caught at present, may "by an improved method of pre- 

 paring reach such a degree of excellence as to fetch the same price 

 which is now paid for Scotch herring." It seems evident that there is 

 little prospect that herring fisheries, carried on with floating nets on a 

 large scale, will, in the near future, be able to compete with the present 

 method, wbich insures a much larger catch. As it has been stated that 

 the most successful Bohuslan boat, which employed a floating net, had 

 been able to sell small quantities of herriug by the score, to the amount 

 of 1,880 crowus [$503.84], we will, for comparison's sake, here state the 

 fact that last winter the Marstrand fishermen sold their rich catch from 

 stationary nets by the boat-load or by the barrel, and realized about 

 23,000 crowns [$6,104]. (A common Bohuslan net, with boats and every- 

 thing belonging to it, costs from 2,600 to 3,000 crowns [$696.80 to $804], 

 according to size, whilst the floating-net boat, according to the Govern- 

 ment standard, cost, as Professor Smitt tells us, 7,350 crowns [$1,960.80].) 

 Even richer catches than those mentioned above are reported as having 

 been made with the American purse-seine (snurpvad), an apparatus 

 which can be used both in the coast waters and farther out at sea, and 

 the practical character of which has made it impossible to introduce 

 floating nets in America. But no improvements in the methods of fish- 



