[5] BOHUS-LAN SEA FISHERIES AND THEIR FUTURE. 93 
and also on the Halland coast. In autumn and towards winter they 
went a little nearer to the northern end of the Guilmarsfiord and the 
Norwegian frontier.” In a pamphlet published in 1765 we read “of the 
necessity of having superintendents of fisheries appointed in the dis- 
tricts of Gottenburg and Bohbus-lin.” The herring must, therefore, have 
staid on the southern and central coasts, which also appears from vari- 
ous laws and reports published about that time. In the report of the 
Royal Commission of Fisheries of January 15, 1770, it is said that “the 
herring fisheries continued, without interruption, on the coast of Bohus- 
lin for twenty years; the only observable change being that they ap- 
peared more plentiful on the northern portion of the coast during the 
latter part of this period than during the first part.” The compara- 
tively insignificant fisheries on the northern coast during the first years 
of the period are hardly mentioned in any reports from that period, but 
from 1750 or 1752 we find more frequent data regarding the fisheries. 
According to the so-called “ oil-refuse act” (Trangrums-akten), the her- 
ring seem at that time to have made the Gottenburg coast their principal 
place of sojourn, whilst later in the period they were not seen there so 
frequently. In 1773 the herring were reported to have made their ap- 
pearance and to have been caught, late dn autumn, or rather in the 
beginning of winter, as far north as Strémstad, and from 1778, also, near 
the Hval Islands, on the coast of Norway. From the above-mentioned 
“ Trangrums-akten,” passed in 1784, it also appears that the principal oil 
refineries were, during the seventh and in the beginning of the eighth 
decade of the eighteenth century, found in the neighborhood of Udde- 
valla and Marstrand, on the central portion of the coast of Bohus-liin. 
A report of 1788 says, that about that time the herring were found prin- 
cipally near the Hllés and Llgé fiords, also on the central portion of the 
coast. In the same report we read that at that time the herring fisheries® 
began about the end of October, when the most northerly points where 
herring were caught were Gullholmen and Iysekil; and that the fish- 
eries generally commenced near Marstrand, Kidédesholmerna, and in the 
neighborhood of the Brunskdrsfiord, where the largest number of her- 
ring were caught; and that as winter approached the herring went 
farther north and were caught in large numbers near Grafvarne, Hun- 
nebostrand, Fliské, and towards the end of the season near Salté, which 
is about one mile south of Stromstad. The same conditions continued 
till the end of the herring period, in the winter of 1808. 
In order to fully understand the importance of the experience gained 
from the last great herring period (1748--1808), it will be necessary to 
State, first, that the fisheries commenced, in 1753, September 29; 1757, 
September 3; 1762, August 16; 1766, September 9 ; 1769, October 3; 1773, 
October 14; 1778, November 4; 1781, October 24; 1783, November 3; and 
thereafter gradually later and later, till finally they did not commerce 
till the middle of December; and, second, that in 1755 the fisheries 
yielded 75,000 tons of herring, in 1760 upwards of 200,000, about the 
year 1785 1,000,000 tons, and in 1795, when the fisheries were at their 
