of the, Fishery Board for Scotland. 23 



Thb Fluctuations from Year to Year. 



The statistics relating to the herring fishery in the Clyde which are 

 available are of two kinds — those which have been printed in the 

 published Annual Reports, and those derived from the books of the 

 Fishery Officers of the various districts. The former go back for a long 

 period, nearly a century, to the year 1809, when the Board of British 

 White Herring Fishery was established. They would, therefore, on this 

 account be very valuable for the purpose of this enquiry if they had 

 contained the information required. Unfortunately, those relating to 

 the quantity of herrings taken or landed deal only with the cured fish, 

 no note having been made until comparatively recent years of the 

 quantity used in a fresh state. In the earlier part of the period it is 

 probable that the proportion of herrings made use of in the non-salted 

 condition, unless quite locally, was email ; but in the later part of the 

 period there is no doubt that it was very large, and included the greater 

 portion of the catches. These statistics for each year from 1809 to 1906, 

 and for each district as well as for the whole Clyde area, are given in 

 Table I., p. 100, which shows the number of barrels of herrings cured on 

 board vessels and landed in the district, the number of vessels on which 

 the fish were cured, the number of barrels cured on shore, and the total 

 number cured from both sources. During the period some changes took 

 place as regards the limits of the various districts, as indicated in the 

 Table, and one or two of them include parts of the West Coast not within 

 the Firth of Clyde. Thus, the fishing at Islay from the year 1821 on 

 wards was included in the Campbeltown district, while from 1850 to 

 1862 the whole of the returns referring to this district were included in 

 the Inveraray district. Another example is the Stranraer district, which 

 from 1821 on includes Dumfries, while in the period 1850-1862 the 

 returns were included in the Greenock district, whereas after 1863 a new 

 district of Ballantrae was formed which corresponded to the previous 

 Stranraer district. It is also to be noted in regard to the barrels of 

 herrings cured on board vessels that the statistics refer only to those 

 which were landed in a district, and do not give any clue to the locality 

 where the herrings were caught. In point of fact, the greater part of such 

 herrings were taken outside the limits of the Firth of Clyde, and 

 especially in the lochs of the West Coast further to the north. Still, with 

 all these limitations the figures are instructive as showing in a broad way 

 the progress of the herring fishery in the Clyde during the greater part 

 of last century. 



When the figures are arranged in decennial periods and the annual 

 mean for each taken, the results are as shown in the following Table : — 



Cured on Cured on Total 



Vessels. Shore. Cured. 



^1809-1818 58,525 6,222 64,747 



1819-1828 43,888 4,791 48,679 



1829-1838 47,896 5,479 53,375 



1839-1848 50,466 8,551 59,017 



1849-1858 32,607 24,698 57,305 



1859-1868 25,820 49,058 74,878 



1869-1878 16,520 40,404 56,924 



1879-1888 24,088 88,505 112,593 



1889-1898 5,908 22,598 28,578 



1899-1906 186 23,707 23,894 



