1793: on the White Sea fifberies. 29 
Literary INTELLIGENCE. 
NorIcEs OF SOME INTERESTING PARTICULARS COMMUN!CATED 
To THE Economica, Society or Sr Pererspurcu, £x- 
TRACTED FROM THE RECORDS OF THAT SOCIETY 
By ARcTIcus. 
On the White Sea fifberies, by a Rufsian merchant of Arch- 
angel, Alexander Fomin. 
Tus fithery was first set up by the present emprefs, who 
engaged some Hollands fifhermen to carry it on for govern- 
ment account, and teach the businefs to a certain number of 
her subjects, selected for that purpose. As soon as the 
thought they were sufficiently instructed to carry it on 
by themselves, the left it to a company furnifhed with 
necefsary privileges, who seem to have made as little pro- 
fit by it as the crown had done, and now it is in the 
hands of the peasants, who catch the fifh for afew of 
those instructed by the Hollanders, who cure them each 
for his own account without any monopoly. 
In answer to some questions afked by the society, at 
one of these instructed Rufsians, who now speculates in 
the trade for himself, a certain Swagin, relative to the 
causes of bad succefs in this great national object, he 
gives a few which he divides into political and natural. 
The natural are simply the scarcity of herrings ‘and cod 
in some seasons; and the. political, first an impolitic law 
which subjects to a duty as foreign fifh, such as the 
* These notices are chiefly valuable because they afford a view 
of the internal state and polity ofthe Rufsian empire that is not to be 
found but in such local difsertations as the present ; what a miserable 
prospect does this afford of the fifheries in the White Sea ! Edit. 
