that I do not allude to boats, for we all know well that 

 vast improvements have been made, from time to time, on 

 the models of that period. 



In proof of the existence of great fisheries at Kinsale, in 

 the 17th to iSth century, I give the following extracts from 

 the ' Annals of Kinsale,' and I think they will be interest- 

 ing — " 14 June, 1672,"— Sir Robert Southwell addressed a 

 letter to Mr. Reeve, of Rotterdam, in which the following 

 passage occurs concerning the Kinsale fishing : " His father 

 .... in 1665, took ;^I300 worth of fish in one pull of a 

 net." "Kinsale, 10 June, 1739," extract from letter of D. 

 Furzer, to Mr. Secty. Burchett : " French fishing vessels . . . 

 now come close to shoar to the number of 200 or 300 sail, 

 from 60 to 80 tons, having each about 400 nets from 8 to 

 10 fathoms long. They come about the beginning of 

 March (if the weather be good) and stay till towards the 

 end of May." 



From these extracts it will be seen that the French fleet 

 of mackerel boats engaged in fishing off the Kinsale coast 

 at that time numbered about 300, and that the nets of each 

 boat were 400 in number, each measuring 8 to 10 fathoms, 

 or, in other words, that the nets of each boat measured 

 about 3 miles in length. So that, apart from the appliances 

 of the native fishing boats, 900 miles of netting were 

 employed by foreigners in the prosecution of the fishery 

 early in the i8th century. 



Further on in the letter I have quoted concerning the 

 French boats, it appears that the natives were under the 

 impression that the enormous size of the nets of the 

 Frenchmen " interrupted the course of the mackerel and 

 tended to break their shoals." Be that as it may, the 

 mackerel have not left the coast, and their ground to-day 

 is the same that it was two centuries auo. 



