company to build this dam in the Eun, together 

 with the sole right to catch the herring, on con- 

 dition that yearly a certain number of the fish be 

 carted alive to the pond in order to spawn ; and 

 with this further condition, that every Wey- 

 mouth householder be allowed to buy four hun- 

 dred herring at twenty-five cents per hundred. 



A century ago four hundred herring to a 

 household might not have been many herring ; 

 but things have changed in a hundred years. 

 To-day no householder, saving the keeper of the 

 town house, avails himself of this generous oifer. 

 I believe that a man with four hundred pickled 

 herring about his premises to-day would be 

 mobbed. Pickled herring, scaly, shrunken, 

 wrinkled, discolored, and strung on a stick in 

 the woodshed, undoes every other rank and bil- 

 ious preserve that I happen to know. One can 

 easily credit the saying, still current in the town, 

 that if a native once eats a Weymouth herring 

 he will never after leave the place. 



Usually the fish first to arrive in the spring- 

 are males. These precede the females, or come 

 along with them in the early season, while the 

 fish to arrive last are nearly all females. The 

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