430 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



this thorough application of the premium system was of no 

 effect. As the institution of bounties had been followed 

 by a decrease in the trade, so their continuation and 

 extension proved unable to prevent its ruin ; and at the 

 close of the Republic's existence the Straits fishery, as will 

 be seen from Appendix B, was nearly extinct, and the 

 Greenland business reduced to utter insignificance. 



CHAPTER III. 



COD FISHERY. 



THIS branch of the fisheries never was of paramount im- 

 portance under the Republic. The name of " small fishery" 

 (kleine visscherye) * which is commonly applied to it, as 

 an antithesis to the denomination constantly given to the 

 herring-fishery, sufficiently points out the fact. One part 

 of the business, the cod-fishery off Iceland, was indeed an 

 extensive concern requiring separate capital ; and as the 

 produce of this fishery was either salted or dried, it com- 

 manded an extensive foreign market. Cod-fishery in the 

 North Sea, and on the Dogger bank especially, was a minor 

 branch of the trade, and indeed more or less an appendage 

 of the herring-fisheries, inasmuch as most of the vessels 



* There has been some controversy about this denomination. 

 Some state it to have been commonly used to designate the whaling 

 trade ; others the Iceland fishery, and the cod and fresh-fish business 

 in the North Sea. As a fact, it has been applied to all three, but very 

 seldom to the whale fishery, which by reason of its importance had no 

 title to the name. In the States' official publications, " kleijne vis- 

 scherije " is used for cod-fishery and for " the trade of the fresh " 

 (de neeringhe van den versche). A Placard of 1665 expressly mentions 

 *' the Great and Small fishery, by which we mean the herring trade 

 and the fishery on Doggersbank." 



