290 APPARATUS FOR FISHING. 



the shore is always more or less shelving, a greater depth 

 of netting is required for the deeper water. Such an 

 enormous body of fish has been sometimes enclosed by one 

 operation of the seine that it has taken a week to land 

 them ; and even with more moderate captures two or three 

 days may be required. It is necessary therefore in the 

 first place to have the net and enclosed fish securely 

 moored. The next operation is "tucking" the fish or 

 taking them out of their net prison. This is done 

 with the tuck-seine, a net only seventy or eighty fathoms 

 long, but very deep at the bunt or middle. It is shot 

 inside the circle formed by the large seine, and as the two 

 ends are hauled into the boat the bunt is gathered up so as 

 to bring it under the fish and raise them to the surface, 

 when they are dipped out with large baskets and put into 

 the boat to be taken on shore. The circle made by the 

 large seine is gradually contracted as the fish are taken out 

 until the whole catch has been landed, and the nets are 

 then taken on shore. If the shoal of fish is apparently a 

 small one, then perhaps only a single net may be used, 

 and the enclosed fish are at once tucked into the boat. 



The seine when used in this manner in Scotland is called 

 a circle-net, and seine-fishing in general is there spoken of 

 as " trawling " an unfortunate expression which has led 

 to great confusion among writers on the fisheries, as the 

 so-called " herring-trawl " is entirely different in its con- 

 struction and mode of working from those nets which in 

 England and Ireland have always been properly called 

 trawls. It is very difficult to induce fishermen to give up 

 using a name they are accustomed to ; but if the Scotch 

 fishermen alone, among the fishermen of the United 

 Kingdom, cannot be persuaded to call a seine by its proper 

 name, it would at least simplify matters and prevent 



