195 



three fourths of that quantity. Besides these, some thousands of bar- 

 rels are annually pickled. The kind known among dealers as the 

 gibbed herring, when properly dressed and cured, is a good article of 

 food, and a substitute for the second quality of mackerel. 



Another sea fishery is that at the Magdalene islands, in which our 

 citizens are allowed to participate by treaty stipulation. It has been 

 thought to be of considerable value as a means of employing vessels 

 (too small for carrying freight with profit) in the early part of the sea- 

 son. It has been prosecuted with various success. Our vessels visit 

 these islands in " spawning time," when the herrings are poor, and 

 the quality, if well cured, is not such to command a high price. For- 

 merly, so little time and care were bestowed upon them that many were 

 unfit for human food. Salted in biilk, as it is termed, they remained in 

 the hold of the vessel until her arrival in port, where they were packed 

 without being washed, and sweltering in all their impurity. Some 

 masters and owners, to their credit, have always been at the labor and 

 expense of curing them in a proper and wholesome manner. Of late, 

 smoking has been found preferable to pickling ; and whenever the fish- 

 ery is successful, many Uiousand boxes are sent to market. The seine* 

 is in common use at the Magdalene islands. The kind best adapted to 

 the fishery is large, requires some twenty or thirty men to manage it, 

 and is capable of enclosing and bringing to the shore several hundred 

 barrels at a haul. Captain R. Fair, in command of her Majesty's ship- 

 of-war the Champion, visited these islands officially in May, 1839, 

 and after the commencement of the fishery. He found the "quantity 

 of herrings very great, exceeding that of any former year ; and the ex- 

 pertness and perseverance of the American fishermen" to be "far 

 beyond that of the" colonists. "About one hundred and forty-six sail 

 of American fishing schooners, of from sixty to eighty tons, and each 

 carrying seven or eight men," were engaged in it, he continues, and 

 caught "nearly seven hundred barrels each;" making for the number 

 stated " a presumed product of one hundred thousand barrels, of the 

 value of one hundred thousand pounds sterling ; the tonnage about ten 

 thousand, and the number of men about one thousand." Whatever the 

 statistics of the year in question, the average quantity of herrings caught 

 by our vessels is not probably forty thousand barrels ; while the price — 

 « pound iteriing the barrel — is quite fifty per cent., I suppose, above that 



* The machine for the maimfacture of "bobWnet" is connected sufficiently with our general 

 subject to justify brief rieference to it. The first machine was perfected in the year 1809. 

 From a minute account of the invention the following facts are obtained. A workman of Not- 

 tingham, England, employed in making ntachinery for the manufacture of fishing-nets, seized 

 eipon a hint famished by a child at play, and discovered by that means a mode of forming the 

 bobbin aiid carriage, as now used ip the bobbinet machine. At first, the invention was con- 

 fined to the manufacture of fishing-nets, but was finally, and after many failures, extended to 

 the making of lace. The value of laxie madi9 by machinery thus introduced is now inmiense. 

 By reference to the statistics of 1831, it appears that, in seven towns and cities in England, 

 thirty-one thousand persons are employed in making, and one hundred thousand women and 

 children obtain a considerable portion of their subsistence by embroidering if. The quantity 

 of cotton required yearly is 2,400,000 pounds, the annual manufacture is 30,771,000 square 

 yards, and the annual value is £1,850,630, and the permanent capital employed about 

 jC3,000,000. Nor is this all; the manufacture baa been extended to the continent, and 

 10,(900,000 yards, or about one-third of the quantity made in Great Biitain, it is estimated, is 

 firoducied there. 



