GREA T BRITAIN. 281 



then cleaned with salt and water, and suspended for a 

 night in a current of air and then smoked until they are 

 of a light brown. They do not keep long. 



The date of 1794 is given as that in which ice was first 

 employed in Scotland to add to the herrings which were 

 packed in boxes and sent by fast sailing vessels to London. 



The present railway rates are levied in a most incompre- 

 hensible manner on the carriage of fish, rendering their 

 being thus carried except, at a loss, often a matter of 

 certainty : while in Land and Water (August, 1881) we 

 read : " The charge for the carriage of herrings from 

 Berwick-on-Tweed to London being the same as that 

 from the extreme north of Scotland, although the distance 

 is about 300 miles less, several herring buyers have com- 

 plained of the unfairness, and have taken steps to obtain 

 a revisal of the rate. This week they have sent their fish 

 to London by steamer at a cost of 2s. ^d. per barrel. 

 The railway rate varies from js. to 9^. per barrel." 



Uses. Largely employed as bait for cod, ling, and long 

 lines generally, and they have, when very numerous, been 

 boiled down for the oil which they contain. 



Lacepede inquires "what honours are not justly his due 

 who first taught mankind the art of impregnating the 

 solids of the herring with sea salt ? " Unhappily the 

 subject is so interwoven with discrepancies as to date and 

 nationality that no answer worthy of credit can be given. 

 At the beginning of the twelfth century there were herring 

 fisheries in the Baltic to which many foreign vessels 

 resorted ; these herrings must therefore have been salted 

 in fact in 1155 Louis VII. of France prohibited his subjects 

 purchasing anything but mackerel and salted herrings at 

 Estampes. In 1290 part of the dried fish shipped at 

 Yarmouth, in the victualling of a vessel to bring the 



