144 



MALACorTEUOUS ABDOMINALS. - 



-FISHES.- 



-Hai.ecoids. 



nnd Flanders. Laws were iiiaile fur the regulation 

 of the fishery, and its commencement fixed to be on 

 the feast of St. Michael (September 29), and its clof;e 

 on that of St. Martin (July 4). In 1128 Henry I. 

 appointed a mayor to govern the burgh and the fishery, 

 and to pay over to the crown a roj'alty of ten thousand 

 Herrings. Dunwich, then a strong walled town, paid 

 twelve thousand to the monks of Ely, and twelve 

 thousand to those of Eye ; but this tax was remitted 

 by King Julm, owing to the town liaving gone to 

 decay through the encroachments of the sea, which 

 now flows over its site. An act called the " Statute 

 of Herrings" was passed in the reign of Edward III. 

 lied Herrings and Bloaters seem to have been cured 

 chiefly at Yarmouth, and the German commercial 

 designation of them was " English Ked Herrings in 

 straw." King John granted a charter to Yarmouth, of 

 which one of the conditions was the presentation of 

 twenty-four Herring-pies to the king through the 

 sherifl" of Norwich. Bed Herrings are mentioned in 

 an inquisition held in the reign of Henry III. ; and in 

 the time of Edward I. they were sent from Yarmouth 

 to London by the last. The best pickled Herrings 

 were then sold at twenty the penny, fifteen Eels brought 

 the same price, and Soles were threepence a dozen. 

 E(lw.ird II. wrote three letters to Ilaco VI. complaining 

 of the arrest and oppression of certain Englisli mer- 

 chants trading to Norway with Herrings and other 

 commoditii.'S. The Earl of Northumberland's house- 

 hold book, kept in the reign of Henry \'ll., mentions 

 Wliyt Herring, Rede Herring, Stocklish, Saltfish, Salt 

 Salmon, Salt Sturgeon, Salt Eels, &c., among the 

 articles of diet to be provided for his family. 



The Scotch Herring fishery was, according to 

 Anderson, in a flourishing state in the days of Gregor\' 

 the Great, contemporary with Alfred. Many acts of 

 the Scottish parliament were passed between 1148 

 and 1284 for its encouragement, and for providing 

 salt for the same ; and ever since the Herring 

 fishery has been considered to be of great national 

 importance. The curing of Red Herrings does not 

 appear, however, to have been at any time carried on 

 with success in Scotland, though attempts were made 

 to introduce it. In the reign of James VI., a.d. 1G1.3, 

 Archibald Campbell was privileged to bring in strangers 

 to make Red Herrings. 



Brill is the first port from whence the Dutch 

 carried on a regular Herring fishery, and its records 

 go no farther back than 1164. The art of salting 

 the fish was greatly improved b)' William Buckelz 

 or Beukelen of Biervliet, who died in 1397. His 

 process gave a pre-eminence to the Dutch cured Her- 

 rings, which they still retain, and he was considered 

 to be so great a benefactor to his country that the 

 Emperor Charles V. honoured his memory by visiting 

 his tomb. 



The earliest documents relating to the Herring 

 fisheries of France are dated in 1030. The charter of 

 the abbey of St. Catherine, near Rouen, mentions the 

 existence in the vafley of Dieppe of five salt-pans and 

 five sheds (salines ct masures) wherein five thousand 

 Herrings were cured, and Robert, Duke of Normandy, 

 granted to the abbey of Fecamp, in 1088, permission 



to hold a fair dining the Hening season. Those 

 Norman fisheiies then, and for more than a century 

 afterwards, supplied Herrings to Paris and the country 

 drained by the Seine. In the year 1859 the Herring 

 fishery carried on from Boulogne employed fifteen 

 hundred men, one hundred and nine boats, and pro- 

 duced four thousand five hundred and fourteen lasts of 

 fisli,* valued at £118,000. 



In 1855 Scotland cured seven hundred and sixty-six 

 thousand barrels of pickled Herrings, and exported 

 half of that quantity — emplo3-ing in the business forty 

 thousand seaman, eleven thousand boats, and twenty- 

 eight thousand curers and labourers. The average 

 annual produce of the Scotch Herring fishery for forty- 

 tlu-ee j'cars is four hundred and sixteen thousand barrels. 

 The general sea-fisheries of Ireland, when most flourish- 

 ing, employ about ninety-three thousand people ; but in 

 1856 the number so engaged was only forty-seven thou- 

 sand, and of the boats, twelve thousand. London 

 receives annnalh', at Billingsgate, two himdrod and 

 seventy-eight millions of Bloaters,f and fifty millions of 

 Red Herrings. 



As the Herring has not been observed to pass 

 Rochelle in the Bay of Biscay, the southern limit of its 

 range may be stated at about the forty-sixth paraflel of 

 latitude, and some minor sculls onlj' go so far; few of 

 any consequence passing the capes of Normandy on the 

 forty-eighth parallel. Its chief haunts are the seas 

 encircling the British isles, or washing the coasts of 

 Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, including the Baltic. 

 It is comparativel}' a scarce fish on the coasts of Iceland, 

 and though Herrings occur in the Arctic seas, they are 

 of small size, and their specific identity with the true 

 Herring has not been established by a careful compa- 

 rison of specimens. The Halecoid called the Herring 

 on the Atlantic coasts of North America, is, according 

 to M. Valencioimes, a different species from the Euro- 

 pean one. The notion formerly entertained of the 

 Herring descending from under the Polar ice in vast 

 columns to the localities we have named, and then 

 retiring again to the north to breed, was not founded 

 on exact observation, and has been abandoned. On 

 the contrary, it is certain that these fishes do spawn in 

 the Channel, and in the bays and fiords that they enter ; 

 the eggs having often been found by fishermen adher- 

 ing to sea-weeds, oj'ster-shells abandoned by the 

 molluscs, and other substances lying at the bottom of 

 the water; and the Herrings themselves have been 

 occasionally observed, in shallow water, within half a 

 mile of the shore, rubbing their bodies against stones 

 with such vivacity, to promote the expulsion of the 

 roe, as to detach part of their scales, while towards 

 sun-rise the quantity of milky secretion from the milt 

 gave a tinge to a great extent of sea. After the Her- 

 rings have deposited their eggs, thej' put out to sea, 

 and do not return again towards the shore except in 

 small sculls. A few stray ones sometimes ascend a river 

 to the fresh-water, and instances of such occurrences 



* A last of Herrings contains twenty cades, or a thousand, 

 every ibuusand ten hundred, and every iiundred six score. Of 

 nnpacked Herrings, eighteen barrels make a last. — (Mortimer's 

 dictionary of Commerce.) 



t " Blote," .iccording to Hallowel, means ''dried;" and 

 " bloat," " dried in smolce." 



