230 FISH CULTURE. 



the grounds, and being late in arriving there, they 

 were not successful. French vessels had made good 

 their fishing before the Skerries boats were prepared. 

 In 1855, three vessels were again fitted at Skerries, 

 averaging fifty tons each, with a crew of eight men 

 and a boy. The vessels had equal success. The first 

 that returned had 21,000 cod, with a large quantity 

 of oU. The weather on the fishing-grounds was 

 changeable and foggy, with heavy swells. They left 

 in April, and were twenty-one days going out ; and 

 returned in August, nine days coming home. If the 

 weather had been favourable in the commencement, 

 they might have completed their cargoes in two 

 months, This is the way to make fishermen, and to 

 form seamen, The poverty of the men at Dingle 

 and other places on the west and south-west coasts 

 make them able only to fit out canoes, to the almost 

 extinction of the sprit-boat and the hooker. The 

 consequence IS that the herring-fishery is much on 

 the decline. And what can this wretched system 

 avail, with their few hundred fathoms of spilliard 

 line and the sceltane of hooks, on those abundant 

 fishing-grounds ? It is not that they are unequal as 

 seamen and fishermen, but it is their poverty, and 

 the absence of all encouragement to fisheries. Compare 

 this with the vessels that fish the coast of Iceland, 



