186 DIVISION I. VERTEBRAL ANIMALS.—CLASS IV. PISCES. 
ereater numbers when it is dark than when it is light. The darkest nights, 
therefore, and particularly those in which the surface of the water is rufled by 
a fresh breeze, are considered the most favorable. To avoid collisions, each 
boat is furnished with one or two torches. From off the beach at Yar- 
mouth, where often several thousand boats are fishing at the same time, 
these numberless lights, passing to and fro in every direction, afford a most 
lively and brilliant spectacle. The meshes of the net are exactly calculated 
for the size of the herring — wide enough to receive the head as far as be- 
hind the gill-covers, but too narrow to allow the pectoral fins to pass. 
= 
Thus the poor fish, when once entangled, is unable to move backwards or 
forwards, and remains sticking in the net, like a bad logician on the horns 
of a dilemma, until the fisherman hauls it on board. In this manner, a 
single net sometimes contains so vast a booty, that it requires all the author- 
ity of a Cuvier or a Valenciennes to make us believe the instances they men- 
tion. A fisherman of Dieppe caught in one night two hundred and eighty 
ihousand herrings, and threw as many back again into the sea, Sometimes 
ereat sloops have been obliged to cut their nets, being about to sink under 
the superabundant weieht of the fish. : 
“The oldest mention of the herring fishery is found in the chronicles of the 
Monastery of Evesham, of the year 709, while the first French documents 
on the subject only reach as far as the year 1030, As far back as the days 
of William the Conqueror, Yarmouth was renowned for its herring fishery ; 
and Dunkirk and the Brill conducted it on a grand scale centuries before 
William Benkelaer, of Biervliet, near Sluys, introduced a better method of 
pickling herrings in small kegs, instead of salting them, as before, in loose, 
irregular heaps. It is very doubtful whether Solon or Lycurgus ever were 
such benefactors of their respective countries as this simple, uneducated fish- 
erman has been to his native land; for the pickled herring mainly contrib- 
uted to transform a small and insignificant people into a mighty nation. 
“In the year 1603, the value of the herrings exported from Holland 
amounted to twenty millions of florins; and in 1615, the fishery gave em- 
ployment to two thousand buysens, or smacks, and to thirty-seven thousand 
men. Three years later we see the United Provinces cover the sea with three 
thousand buysens (nine thousand additional boats served for the transport of 
the fishes), and the whole trade gave employment at least to two hundred 
thousand individuals. At that time Holland provided all Europe with her- 
rings; and it may, without exaggeration, be affirmed that this small fish 
was their best ally and assistant in casting off the Spanish yoke, by provid- 
ing them with money, the chief sinew of war. Had the Emperor Charles V. 
been able to foresee that Benkelaer’s discovery would, one day, prove so 
detrimental to his son and successor, Philip H., he would hardly have done 
