OF ALL COUNTRIES. 501 



herrings just fresh from the Shetlands. At the present day 

 German troops quartered at Salisbury would raise some 

 very different considerations from that of turning an honest 

 penny by the sale of Shetland herrings. From the same 

 source we find that no slight care was taken for the comfort, 

 and even the caprices, of the crews, for the secretary, writing 

 to the contractor who supplied the biscuits, apologises for 

 the dissatisfaction which would probably be felt by the 

 crews on finding the biscuits to be made of rye. Not that 

 there was any fault to be found with the contractor, he 

 hastens to say, " but that our men like everything of the 

 best." 



In France the laws affecting these matters entered into 

 very minute and exact details. By an ordinance of 

 Henri III., containing a hundred articles for the regulation 

 of maritime matters, all pares or artificial fis'uing-grounds 

 constructed for forty years at the mouths of navigable 

 rivers were ordered to be destroyed. Nearly a hundred 

 years later a decree of Louis XIV. defined the foreshore 

 as belonging to the crown, and laid down rules as to the 

 permissibility of ravoirs, courtines, and vinets, or vonets, 

 which are different collections of nets or filets constructed 

 upon the foreshore so as to be hidden at high water and 

 uncovered when the tide is low. Under the same statute 

 amber, coral, whales, poissons-ti-lait, and various miscel- 

 laneous productions of the ocean, belonged, if taken in the 

 deep sea, wholly to the captor ; if on the strand, then one- 

 third went to the King, one-third to the admiral, and one 

 third only to the discoverer of the prize. 



At Maremmes the government nets were placed on the 

 shifting sands, so that they had to be removed at every 

 tide, small boats being used for the purpose. The nets were 

 formed into angles, more or less obtuse, following the lay 



