INTRODUCTORY 



enough for his father is good enough for him. Companies 

 may have taken the trade out of the hands of indi- 

 viduals ; steam-vessels may have ousted some of the 

 old smacks ; but methods and implements generally 

 have undergone but little alteration even in a couple 

 of thousand years; a net or a dredge or a pot or an 

 enclosure is now what it was then. The few important 

 modifications or improvements in gear will be dealt 

 with presently. 



Nor has political history much to tell us about the 

 fisheries that would be of general interest. Henry I of 

 England is supposed to have regarded the sturgeon as his 

 exclusive property ; and we know that the salmon forms 

 the subject of a clause in Magna Charta. It is generally 

 believed that Biscayan whalers as far back as the fourteenth 

 century fished off the coast of what is now called New- 

 foundland, and even off Greenland and Spitzbergen. 

 The Portuguese instituted the Grand Banks cod-fishery 

 in the year 1500. In the time of Charles II, the British 

 fisheries had so declined that the King, in 1662, offered 

 200 to every man who would fit out a " brisse," or Dutch 

 herring-smack, within six months from the date of his 

 proclamation. 



Fishing-grounds have, of course, formed the subject of 

 disputes between countries. In 1839 a treaty was signed 

 between England and France to settle the exact boundaries 

 of the oyster, and other, grounds, to which both nations 

 laid claim ; and in 1854 a similar agreement was drawn 

 up between our Government and that of the United States, 

 relating^ to the Canadian fisheries. 



20 



