116 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [18] 
for their living on, so to speak, accidental and sudden work. This dis- 
advantage makes itself peculiarly felt in a country like ours, where the 
fishermen cannot, when the Bohus-lin fisheries come to an end, move 
to another part of the kingdom and there follow their accustomed avo- 
cation; and where we do not find a population well acquainted with 
the fisheries moving with them from place to place; but where, at the 
beginning of every fishing period, new hands have to be trained. That 
under these circumstances the employment of seines offers great advan- 
tages over drag-nets will not be astonishing. <A single fact will prove 
this assertion, viz, that about 6,000 Bohus-lin seine fishers could, dur- 
ing the most favorable portion of the last herring period, catch more 
fish during one fishery than 47,000 Scotch drag-net fishers during the 
fisheries of an entire year. The value of the Scotch fishing vessels for 
the year 1880 was officially reported at £556,946, and that of the drag- 
nets at £619,012, making a total of £1,175,958; whilst the boats and 
the apparatus of our Bohus-lin fishermen during the same period were 
hardly worth more than about £40,000 to £50,000. As our fisheries 
positively come to an end after a certain number of years, it is highly 
important that the number of men who, by such an event, are suddenly 
deprived of their means of earning a living should be as limited as pos- 
sible; and that the capital invested in boats, apparatus, &c., should be 
as small as possible. In judging of this matter, one should not be led 
astray by the childish and utopian proposition, showing anything but 
knowledge of the subject, that our fishermen should, after generally adopt- 
ing the drag-nets for fishing on our coast, follow the herring in their mi- 
grations, and, if necessary, be ready at once to engage in the so-called 
great fisheries in the North Sea according to the Dutch method. The 
above-mentioned nets, which require boats specially adapted to them, 
are not suited to our circumstances and our remote location.  -Wher- 
ever they have been introduced, sometimes at a great expense, eé. g., in 
other parts of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Germany, they have not 
led to any desirable results as far as the herring fisheries are concerned. 
From this reason it will be advantageous if the sale of fresh fish in our 
own country could be encouraged as much as possible; and if the re- 
maining portion of the fish could be prepared for the market by employ- 
ing as few persons as possible in this process. Our herring industry 
during the eighteenth century had a great advantage in this respect 
over that of the sixteenth century; for the manufacture of oil required 
a much smaller number of persons than the salting and smoking of the 
herring. Another inconvenience is occasioned by the circumstance 
that since Bohus-liin has been united with Sweden we have no longer a 
sufficiently large population which is thoroughly acquainted with the 
process of salting herring. This is another reason for making the 
chemical and technical investigations above referred to, viz, that of 
finding out the most approved methods of deriving the proper benefit 
from the large quantity of herring caught, by preparing them in other . 
ways besides salting. 
