THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 75 
which they can be found, and he would be a shrewd fisher- 
man who always obtained miraculous draughts. As we 
have shown, herring fishing is very much of a lottery; of 
two boats which may side by side be plying their trade, 
one may find a hundred barrels of fish in its train of netting, 
while the other may not capture a hundred herrings! So 
in line fishing and in trawling, the fortunes of the catch are 
upon occasions singularly varied, huge piles of the fruit of 
the sea may fall into the nets of Tom, whilst Dick may also 
obtain a share of the finny spoil, but poor Harry in vain woos 
fortune on the deep—never a fish—round or flat, comes 
near his machinery of capture, no gigantic member of the 
Gadidz family, no aldermanic turbot rewards his zealous 
labours. 
“Why,” it is being asked in various quarters, “should 
we accord our sympathies to fishermen in a greater degree 
than to other men, who gain their bread by the sweat of 
their brow?” That is a question which it is not, we think, 
difficult to answer. Fishing is an industry by itself, and those 
who woo fortune on the waters but seldom find it; fishing 
being a perilous occupation, which yields but an unsteady 
reward. It has been said by economists of the Gradgrind 
school, that “no man is compelled to fish,’ which is a 
truism, but if the advice implied in the sneer were to be 
taken, it would bode no good to the country. Happily, it 
is advice that never will be taken, there have been fishers 
on the sea since the miraculous draughts were taken from 
the waters of Galilee, and there will be fishers probably for 
centuries to come, fishing, we hope, under improved condi- 
tions. At the present time the fishing population is still 
largely leavened by men who are descendants of hereditary 
fishermen, and who, as well as their fathers before them, have 
known no other occupation—it is an occupation with which 
