Trials of Herring Fishers 305 



anxious time for them, and all manner of strange 

 devices are resorted to for the purpose of turning 

 him from his course. For should he pass through 

 the nets, while he would hardly feel them, it would 

 be nothing short of a disaster for the poor men earning 

 their hard and precarious livelihood. It might con- 

 vert a fairly prosperous season into one in which a 

 dead loss was made, for those nets are costly, and 

 a whale can easily carry away a whole flight. 



Scarcely less destructive are the sharks and dog- 

 fish and porpoises, aU of which are far too strong, 

 ravenous, and reckless, to be safely hindered by the 

 envelopment of herring nets. Also it is not an un- 

 known thing for a ship to blunder through the nets, 

 and cause much damage, so that, apart altogether from 

 the chances of severe autumnal weather, the herring 

 fisherman's life is a very anxious one, and he deserves 

 all the efforts that are being made by good people 

 ashore for the furtherance of his spiritual and material 

 welfare. These fishermen are, taking them all round, 

 a splendid race of men, and entirely worthy of our 

 deepest regard. 



The tiny species of herring known as Whitebait 

 (Clupea alba) is taken in small bag nets just beneath 

 the surface of the water in the estuaries of our rivers, 

 principally in the Thames, in spite of the pollution 

 which has robbed the beautiful river of most of its 

 fish, even in the high reaches. But the tiny wanderers 

 only come in with the flood-tide, getting out again, 

 those that are not caught, before the poisonous matter 

 brought down by the ebb has had time to overtake 

 them. The catching of them is a very small but 

 fairly lucrative industry, there being always a brisk 

 demand for them at high prices, since they are what 

 may be termed a fashionable fish. Yet, as I have 



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