76 FJSHERJES AND FISHERMEN 



CHAPTER VIII. 



A PRACTICAL CONCLUSION. 



Fare you well. 

 The fool shall now fish for himself. 



Beaumont and Fletcher. 



ItKtlr] jxev yap yaia kukcov, irXfiT] be BaXaaaa. 

 Full is the earth of sorrows ; full the sea. 



Hesiod. 



Yarmouth, where, as tradition asserts, the first herrings 

 were caught in the fifth century of the Christian era, is still 

 one of the principal centres of British fisheries ; and fish in 

 many forms, but more particularly in that of the herring, 

 forms the staple, not to say the totality of its commerce. 

 Throughout the eastern counties a peculiar measurement 

 prevails. Four herrings go to a warp, and thirty-three 

 warps, or 132 fishes, are reckoned as a hundred, the buyer 

 getting the benefit of the odd thirty-two ; a method of 

 calculation especially to be recommended to the notice 

 of publishers, with whom the reckoning of thirteen to the 

 dozen goes rather the other way. Perhaps the computation 

 may have originated in a custom still prevalent in some 

 parts of the kingdom, of permitting the fishermen to carry 

 away a certain number of handfuls. A hundred of these 

 " hundreds " make up a " last," each of which therefore 

 contains not 10,000, but 13,200 herrings. When the 



