ow 
76 THE REV. R. F. WHEELER, M.A., 
bushels of sprats are considered a good dressing for an acre of 
land. About 400 to 500 boats are said to be engaged in this 
fishing. 
Soues, Tursot, Puatice, &e. 
We now come to the soles, turbots, plaice, skate, and other 
like fish. These, though they can be, and are all caught by 
hook and line, are yet more generally taken by the trawl. Some 
idea of the value of this fishery may be obtained from the fact 
that the estimated quantity of soles sold in Billingsgate is one 
hundred millions a year; and of plaice thirty-five millions are 
disposed of. This brings us at once to the much-vexed question 
of trawling, and its effects, which is just now creating so much 
stir up and down the north-east coast. 
It would seem that no history of trawl fishing exists, and it 
would only be by a diligent search into the records of the custom 
house that any facts relative to the steps by which it has attained 
its present importance could really be arrived at. There seems, 
however, to be no doubt at all that Devonshire was its birth- 
place, and that Brixham was the first port from which a trawler 
set forth. Mr. Jonathan Couch, the well-known naturalist, in- 
forms me than he was well acquainted with a man who belonged 
to the coastguard, and who had served an apprenticeship on board 
a trawl vessel belonging to Plymouth, at the latter part of last 
century. At that time, there were only three such vessels be- 
longing to that port—the burden of each twenty-five tons—and 
they were without a deck. Now, the average tonnage is at least 
double that amount, and the number belonging to Plymouth is 
sixty-four. Mr. Walker Smith, who was for sixty years a fisher- 
man at Brixham, stated, some thirty years since, that when he 
first went to sea, in 1773, there were but seven fishing vessels 
at Brixham. As far as I have been able to ascertain, there are 
now between 200 and 300 trawling vessels marked and numbered 
out of that port, ranging from twenty to forty-five tons, all 
eutter-rigged. They are called sloops, carvel built, and all ex- 
clusively beam trawlers. Each vessel has three men and a boy, 
or four men and a boy, when they go to Hull. There are, 
