IRISH FISHERIES. 185 



rich in mineral wealth ; there is copper in Wicklow, 

 Waterford, and Cork, iron ore in Leitrim, Kilkenn}^ 

 and Ulster. In County Connaught there is coal mixed 

 with the iron ore. In parts of Ireland there is excellent 

 porcelain clay, suitable for pottery manufacture. But 

 if the land has been unexplored and unworked, the sea 

 has been almost totally abandoned. All round the 

 west coast of Ireland there are enormous shoals of fish 

 which are consumed, not by Irishmen, but by swarms 

 of sea-birds which follow and devour them, or by 

 foreign fishermen who come all this long way to reap 

 the harvest of the sea, which by right should fall to the 

 share of the Irishmen living along the coast. It can- 

 not be for want of harbours, as there are any number 

 of natural harbours. The greater number of the 

 boats which take part in the fishery are from 

 the Isle of Man, Devonshire, Cornwall, Wales, 

 Scotland, and even from France. Whilst the 

 Irish fishermen are diminishing in number, the 

 strangers are increasing. Regularly every year Scotch 

 fishing-boats leave Cockenzie, in the Firth of 

 Forth, for the herring fishery off Kinsale in Ireland, 

 the Scotchmen at that place having provided them- 

 selves with fifty decked fishing-boats, each costing, 

 with nets and gear, about five hundred pounds. So 

 profitable was their Irish fishing, that, with the aid of 

 Lord Wemyss, they built themselves a harbour instead 

 of appealing to the Government to do so ; such is the 

 difference between the Scotch and the Irish character. 

 So rich in fish are the seas around the west coast of 

 Ireland that the Dutch, in the reign of Charles the First, 

 were admitted to these Irish fisheries on the payment 

 of thirty thousand pounds ; in fact, these seas abound 

 with myriads of every kind of fish in common use, 



