222 PHYSOSTOMI. 



layer. All broken or inferior fish, or those which have received too small an 

 amount of salt, should be rejected. As the contents subside a fresh layer of fish 

 is added, for the barrel must be kept full. 



Yarmouth bloaters are variously prepared, but one of the best solutions in 

 which this can be effected is mixing 29 lb. of common salt with 71 lb. of water, 

 in large vats ; in this the herring will float, so they are kept down by wooden 

 battens weighted with bags of salt, which gradually dissolve and keep the solution 

 at its proper density. When the fish have become rigid the pickle is run off and 

 the herrings are suspended in a current of air until they are removed to a chimney 

 and smoked from 12 to 18 hours, the fuel employed being two parts of oakwood, 

 beechwood, and turf. These bloaters will keep four or five days, but are best if 

 hanging in a current of air. 



Red herrings are bloaters more strongly cured, the pickle having about -fa of 

 its weight of saltpetre added to the salt. They are dried for 24 or 48 hours and 

 then smoked to the requisite tinge. 



Kippered herrings are such as are pickled, dried, and split down the back 

 almost to the tail fin, showing the back bone, the gills and intestines are removed, 

 they are then cleaned with salt and water, and suspended for a night in a current 

 of air and then smoked until they are of a light brown. They do not keep long. 



The date of 1794 is given as that in which ice was first employed in Scotland 

 to add to the herrings which were packed in boxes and sent by fast sailing vessels 

 to London. 



The present railway rates are levied in a most incomprehensible manner on 

 the carriage of fish, rendering their being thus carried, except at a loss, often a 

 matter of certainty ; while in Land and Water (August, 1881) we read : — " The 

 charge for the carriage of herrings from Berwick-on-Tweed to London being the 

 same as that from the extreme north of Scotland, although the distance is about 

 300 miles less, several herring buyers have complained of the unfairness, and have 

 taken steps to obtain a revisal of the rate. This week they have sent their fish 

 to London by steamer at a cost of 2s 4<d per barrel. The railway rate varies 

 from 7s to 9s per barrel." 



Uses. — Largely employed as bait for cod, ling, and long lines generally, and 

 they have, when very numerous, been boiled down for the oil which they contain. 



Lacepede inquires " what honours are not justly his due who first taught 

 mankind the art of impregnating the solids of the herring with sea salt ?" 

 Unhappily, the subject is so interwoven with discrepancies as to date and 

 nationality that no answer worthy of credit can be given. At the beginning of 

 the twelfth century there were herring fisheries in the Baltic, to which many 

 foreign vessels resorted ; these herrings must, therefore, have been salted; in fact, 

 in 1155 Louis VII of Prance prohibited his subjects purchasing anything but 

 mackerel and salted herrings at Estampes. In 1290 part of the dried fish shipped 

 at Yarmouth, in the victualling of a vessel to bring the infant Queen of Scotland 

 from her Norwegian sire, were herrings, and these, of course, were cured. In the 

 time of Edward III, mention is made of some white herrings found in vessels 

 captured by the Cinque Ports ; and in the same reign red herrings are also 

 specified by name, so that both sorts of curing were practised before the time of 

 William Berkelszoon, of Biervliet, in Planders (he died 1397), who has been 

 credited with the distinction of introducing them. There is, however, no doubt 

 that he greatly improved the methods he found in use, by curing the fish in small 

 kegs instead of piling them in heaps, which so extended the trade in them that 

 Charles V erected a statue to his memory, and, with his sister, visited his tomb, 

 and offered up prayers for his soul ; while Mary of Hungary, during her visit to 

 the Low Countries, paid a more characteristic tribute to his memory, namely, 

 that of eating a salt herring on his tomb. 



In our own country the herring fishery certainly flourished in the twelfth 

 century, for in 1195, according to historians, the town of Dunwich, in Suffolk, 

 was obliged to furnish the king with twenty-four thousand herrings. Mention is 

 also made of the herring fishery in a chronicle of the Monastery of Evesham, in 

 709. The herring fair in Yarmouth was regulated in the reign of Edward III 



