576 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



been called into life again, and are in vigour at this 

 moment. 



The same law of June 2ist, 1881, in which these statutes 

 are contained, regulates a few more subjects relative to 

 fishery, of which brief mention ought to be made in the 

 present work. 



The tenth clause of the law empowers Government to 

 prohibit the killing of seals in certain parts of the Northern 

 seas, and during certain seasons. The enactment existed 

 before, and has only been repeated in the law of 1881 in 

 order to collect all legislative dispositions relative to fisheries 

 into one single statute ; the unrepealed clauses of the law 

 of 1857 being likewise repeated in 1881 for the same reason. 

 The Government's faculty to restrict seal-killing by Dutch- 

 men was first established by law of Dec. 3ist, 1876 (Staats- 

 blad No. 289) and executed by Royal Decree of February 

 1 5th, 1877 (Staatsblad No. 19), by which Dutchmen were 

 prohibited from killing seals in certain high latitudes before 

 April 3rd of each year. The measure was enacted upon 

 the invitation of the British Government ; it was at the time, 

 and is now, of no importance whatever for the Netherlands, 

 as the last enterprise of seal and walrus-killing in the 

 Northern seas had come to an infelicitous termination in 

 1875, the year before the law, and the business has not 

 been since resumed. Walrus-killing in latter years only 

 deserves mention because it has been, so to say, the last 

 glimpse of the once flourishing trade of whaling. I have 

 stated in a former chapter that the latter business was kept 

 up late in the present century by two vessels from Harlingen 

 under the stimulus of premiums, without which it would 

 have been given up much earlier. The last whales were 

 caught by these vessels in 1851 and 1852, each of which 

 seasons produced one fish ; and they have since made it 



