42 The Commercial Products of the Sea. 



not counting the number of small boats. Herrings breed 

 with remarkable rapidity. The females are in number up- 

 wards of two-thirds more than the males, and some of them 

 contain as many as 60,000 eggs. The abundance of herrings 

 is such that it is not diminished either by the fishing or by 

 the destruction committed by large fish and by innumerable 

 birds. The herrings move in shoals, which are sometimes 

 from eight to ten miles long by two to four wide, and of 

 unknown depth. These immense masses, which advance 

 very rapidly, are distinguished by the presence of birds 

 flying above them, and by the agitation of the sea, and at 

 night the place which they occupy is phosphorescent. In 

 1 78 1 herrings came in such large quantities to Buscoe, on 

 the coast of Gottenburg, that they were caught by the 

 hand. In 1784 ^^56,000 worth of herrings were caught in 

 the space of a fortnight in Loch Urn. In 1773 there was 

 such an invasion of herrings in Loch Torridon, that 150 

 fishing-boats caught from 12 to 20 casks each in the space 

 of a single night. In some cases 50,000 herrings have been 

 caught by a single cast of the nets, and it is also said that 

 the fishermen of Dunkirk, Calais, Dieppe, and Boulogne 

 have frequently taken 280,000 herrings in a night. Not 

 very long ago the fishermen of one English town, Lowes- 

 toft, caught in two days 22,000,000 herrings ! And this at 

 only one of a hundred such places. At the retail price 

 of a penny each, this two days' catch would come to 

 £<^\,666\ but it was so beyond all the mercantile force or 

 curing-power of the place, that tons had to be sold for 

 manure. 



But few people know the great value of our legitimate 

 fishing ground at home. At the same season when the 

 pilchards arrive from the south, and swarm on the coast of 

 Cornwall, herrings in myriads arrive from the north and 



