THE HERRING FISHERY. 



109 



characters. " They were presented to the then King of Norway, Frederick II., who was 

 so frightened by the characters he saw on the backs of the innocent fish that he turned 

 ghastly pale, for he thought that they announced his approaching death and that of his 

 queen. " A council of savants was convened, and the learned ones solemnly reported that 

 the words implied, "Very soon you will cease to fish herrings, as well as other people." 

 Some more politic scientists gave another explanation, but it was useless, for the king died 

 next year, and his late subjects became firmly convinced that the two herrings had been 

 celestial messengers charged to announce that monarch's sudden end. 



The herring abounds in the entire Northern Ocean from the coasts of France and 

 England to Greenland and Lapland. They are very gregarious, and travel in immense 

 shoals, their appearance in any specified locality being uncertain and always sudden. On 

 the coast of Norway the electric 

 telegraph is used to announce 

 to the fishing towns the ap- 

 proach of the shoals, which can 

 always be perceived at a dis- 

 tance by the wave they raise. 

 In the fiords of Norway the 

 herring fisheries are the principal 

 means of existence for the sea- 

 board population. So in 1857 

 the paternal Norwegian Govern- 

 ment laid a submarine cable 

 round the coast 100 miles in 

 length, with stations ashore at 

 intervals conveniently placed 

 for the purpose of notifying 



the fishermen. In Holland the industries of catching and curing the fish are highly 

 profitable ; the fishery is in consequence known as " the great/' while whaling is known 

 as the "small fishery." To a simple Dutch fisherman, George Benkel, who died in 1397, 

 Holland owes the introduction of the art of preserving and curing the herring. Two 

 hundred years after his death, the Emperor Charles V. solemnly ate a herring on his 

 tomb, as homage to the memory of the creator of a great national industry. 



In our country there is also an important trade in the fish. Yarmouth sends out 

 400 vessels of from forty to sixty tons, the larger carrying a crew of twelve. In 1857 

 three fishing boats of this seaport brought home 3,762,000 fish. In Scotland the one 

 town of Wick had a few years ago 920 boats employed in the fisheries. 



The Dutch use lines 500 feet in length, with -fifty or more nets to each. The upper 

 part of these nets is buoyed with empty barrels or cork, while they are kept down by 

 lead or stone weights ; they can be lowered by lengthening the cord to which the buoys 

 are attached. The meshes of the nets are so arranged that if the herring is too small 

 to be caught in the first meshes, he passes through and gets caught in the succeeding 

 one. Dr. Bertram went out in a Wick boat to the fishing grounds. He says : 

 142 



THE HERRING (Clupea harengns). 



