THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 23 
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board in otherwise than trim array. Indeed, many of the 
most magnificently fine females, whom we saw standing at 
respectable doors, or looking out of decent windows, or 
going sedately about their evening occupations from shop 
to shop, had been assiduously engaged in gutting all day 
long.” 
On some one or two days during every season’s fishing, 
at Wick and other important herring ports—Fraserburgh 
and Peterhead are now rather before Wick as centres of 
the fishery—the delivery of fish from, perhaps, five in the 
morning till four o’clock in the afternoon will be so 
incessant and in such large quantities that the whole 
industrial resources and activity of the place will be called 
into requisition, as it is of the utmost importance that the 
herrings landed should be cured by set of sun, so as to 
secure the best brand. The close of a successful herring 
fishing season is always marked in Scotland by the great 
number of marriages which take place; in many of the 
smaller fishing ports the weddings of the young people 
depend on the fishery. If it should prove a failure, marriages 
are postponed in consequence, and men and women agree 
to wait for more prosperous times. We have not the means 
of determining exactly how many persons are employed 
throughout Scotland in the capture of the herring only, 
but, taking men and boys together, there will probably be 
not less than fifty thousand persons, whilst the amount of 
capital sunk in boats, fishing-gear, and the materials of the 
cure will probably not be less than a million sterling. 
According to an official document which we have examined 
there were over 14,000 fishing vessels of all kinds in 
Scotland in the year 1881, the larger number of them being 
employed in the shore fishery for herrings. Some fisher- 
men make it their business to fish for the herring all the 
