THE HKRR1NG. 251 



Astonishing fecundity When first pickled. 



seeking their food there. Their enemies are, 

 however, numerous, which seems to be the happy 

 contrivance of providence to keep them within 

 bounds, for their fecundity is astonishing: it has 

 been calculated, that if the offspring of a single 

 herring could be suffered to multiply unmolested 

 and undiminished for twenty years, they would 

 exhibit a bulk of ten times the size of the earth. 



This fish, which is in such general use, being 

 seen both at the table of the rich and in the cot- 

 tage of the poor, was known to our ancestors at 

 a remote period. They, however, did not derive 

 from it that advantage which succeeding ages 

 have been enabled to do. It did not then, as at 

 the present day, form a considerable branch of 

 commerce; the method of preserving it, from 

 corruption, by means of sea salt, being then un- 

 known. Towards the close of the fourteenth 

 century, that secret was accidentally discovered 

 by William Beuckel, of Biervliet, near Sluys, in 

 Holland, and from his name is derived the term 

 pickle, which we have borrowed from the Dutch. 

 Beuckel died in 1397, and a hundred and fifty 

 years afterwards, the emperor Charles the Fifth, 

 to shew his regard for this benefactor of man- 

 kind, celebrated the invention by eating a her- 

 ring on his tomb. 



It is generally believed, that in winter the 



herrings retire to the Arctic, or Icy ocean, and 



that they depart from hence on their migrations 



to the southern parts of Europe, and to America. 



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