THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 489 



College bye-laws, the following are the most interest- 

 ing : 



No herring-buss to put to sea without a complete 

 ' fleet " of forty nets at the least (Art. 2). 



No buss to sail home during sale-hunting time (i.e. 

 between June 24th and July I5th), or come into port before 

 July i pth, unless with a complete cargo, i.e. with the whole 

 of her barrels packed full of herring treated according to law 

 (Art. 15). This is the first legal sanction of the monopoly 

 of sale-hunting, of which more shall be said in a following 

 chapter. The institution may have existed before, as 

 a College bye-law, but not before 1753, as it is not men- 

 tioned in v. d. Lely's ' Recueil.' 



Herring-nets to be subject to control, as well as herring 

 barrels. A complete set of regulations relative to the 

 nets to be used in the cured-herring fishery was enacted in 

 1 80 1 (Arts. 67-73).* 



The sizes of both nets and meshes, and the quality of the 

 hemp to be used in them, were prescribed in detail. 

 Previous to delivery to the owner, every herring-net was 

 to be submitted to inspection by a male or female 

 " counter " (teller of telster), i.e. a sworn official entitled to 

 verify and certify to the size and number of the meshes 

 and the dimensions of the net ; and the very hemp intended 

 to be spun into yarn for herring-nets was to be previously 



' The style of these articles is in some parts so antiquated and 

 different from the usual wording of laws in the first years of the 

 present century, as to make it particularly probable that they were 

 modelled upon some bye-law of the former College's making, and of 

 a much older date. An "order" relative to herring-net making, 

 dated 1579 and arrested by " th four towns " then incorporated in 

 the College, is mentioned on p. 15 of v. d. Lely's Recueil, without 

 further reference to its contents. 



