278 THE WICK FISHERY. [CHAP. vi. 



mate with some other herring colony. I shall be met here 

 by the old argument, that " the fecundity of fish is so enor- 

 mous as to prevent their extinction," etc. etc. But the cer- 

 tainty of a fish yielding twenty thousand eggs is no surety 

 for these being hatched, or if hatched, of their escaping the 

 dangers of infancy, and reaching the market as table food. 

 I watch the great shoals at Wick with much interest, and 

 could wish to have been longer acquainted with them. How 

 long time have the Wick shoals taken to grow to their present 

 size ? what size were the shoals when the fish had leave to 

 grow without molestation ? how large were the shoals when 

 first discovered ? and how long have they been fished ? are 

 questions which I should like to have answered. As it is, 

 I fear the great Wick fishery must come some day to an 

 end. In the course of twenty-seven seasons as many as 

 1,275,027 barrels of herring have been caught off Wick (each 

 barrel containing 700 fish) ; and in all probability as many 

 more fish were killed by the nets, and never taken ashore. 

 When the Wick fishery first began the fisherman could 

 carry in a creel on his back the nets he required ; now he 

 requires a cart and a good strong horse ! Leaving out one 

 of the twenty-seven seasons (the first), and dividing the 

 remaining twenty-six into two periods of thirteen each, we 

 find the aggregate of the boats, the average crans to each, and 

 the aggregate total for the 



Boats. Average Crans. Total Crans. 



1st thirteen years, 10,202 941 735,318 



2d 13,522 519 539,719 



During the first of these periods each boat carried about 

 twenty-five nets, spun and worked in the county in a homely 

 way ; during the second period each had from thirty to 

 thirty-five nets, machine-made, the twine being very even 

 and fine, and far larger and deeper, a great many of them 

 being of cotton, and far superior in their catching power to 



