302 PREFACE. 



Zuider Zee fishery has come in for a share of attention 

 proportioned to the small area of the water so called, but 

 perhaps rather short of the historical interest inherent to 

 the trade and the measures taken respecting it. Even as 

 regards deep sea fisheries, many details, a perfect insight 

 into which might have thrown light upon the whole, have 

 not been investigated for sheer lack of time and opportunity. 

 I have, in short, had to be satisfied with the certainty of 

 not having omitted, and a reasonable hope of not having 

 misrepresented, any of the leading historical and actual 

 features of the subject. Such as it is, however, the work 

 contains a quantity of matter drawn from perfectly reliable 

 authentic documents, into which no former writer on Dutch 

 sea fisheries has ever looked, as none of them ever at- 

 tempted a complete historical treatment of the subject. 



There is much about laws in the book, and perhaps less 

 about fishers and fishing. I have taken the centre of 

 gravity of the given prize subject to lie in the former, and 

 made it my business to show, first, what laws were made, 

 and why they were made ; next, what they wrought. For 

 the same reason, herring fishery, the only branch which 

 has been constantly legislated on down to twenty-five years 

 ago, occupies a very prominent place in the following 

 pages. The former and present proportions of the business 

 would perfectly warrant the pre-eminence if nothingelse did. 



Many details will perhaps be more interesting to the 

 Dutch than to the British reader. The latter, I hope, will 

 remember, that if a work like this is ever read at all, the 

 chances are that it will be read most by the men who can 

 trace in it some of the thoughts and actions of their own 

 ancestors. 



A. BEAUJON. 



April i8/yfc, 1883. 





