178 SEA FISHERIES 



early as the year 670 A.D. the revenues of the town 

 were such that the Abbey of Barking levied a tax upon 

 the fishery. Under William the Conqueror St. Edmund's 

 Abbey received an annual due of 60,000 herring. In 

 1088 the Duke of Normandy permitted the Abbey of 

 Sainte Trinit at Fecamp to hold a herring fair. To-day 

 Fecamp is, with Boulogne, our greatest herring centre. 

 In the twelfth century, as now, there was a busy herring 

 fishery along the coasts of Scotland, in the Channel, and 

 in the Baltic. There was a great demand in the market 

 for mackerel. In 1364 the men of Dieppe and Rouen 

 discovered the coasts of Senegal and of Guinea, and 

 instituted a fishery there. Later the Portuguese exploited 

 the slopes of the Arguin bank and the Baie du Lvrier, 

 carrying on their fishery from 1444 until 1536, when they 

 were expelled by the inhabitants of the Canaries. In the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Spaniards of 

 Vigo Bay, the Basques of Cap Breton, and the fishermen 

 of the Chaume d'Olonne caught large quantities of 

 sardines, and the sale of the fish yielded the principal 

 revenue of the bishopric of Compostella. About the 

 year 920 A.D. grey mullet must have swarmed in the fish- 

 ponds of Les Martigues, since the Archbishop of Aries 

 purchased the fishery at that date. Pliny the Elder gives 

 a capital description of the tunny fisheries of the Helles- 

 pont and the Bosphorus. 



I think I am not mistaken in stating that the 

 dependence of the fish upon its own history is suffi- 

 ciently established. It is complicated by a dependence 

 upon psychological and social factors. Pretentious as 

 these epithets may seem, I do not hesitate to employ 

 them, as I think they are justified by the fact. In the 

 same bank of sardines the males are often further from 

 sexual maturity than the females. At the end of winter 



