HERRING. 
973 
1890 nearly £45,000 (£3,457 from Liim Fjord"). Nor- 
way’s income from this source 6 in 1891 was £360,600'’. 
The results of the Herring-fisheries of Great Britain 
and Ireland were in 1887 and 1 8 8 8 d : 
1887. 
1888. 
Cwts. 
£. 
Cwts. 
£. 
England and Wales.. 
1,605,140 
442,288 
1,729,641 
485,806 
Scotland 
3,217,361 
641,572 
2,846,796 
614,838 
Ireland 
— 
— 
75,548 
30,728 
The Herring-fishery of Holland yielded in 1 880 e about 
227,000,000 Herrings and in 1881 about 197,500,000, 
with a market value of between three and four million 
guldens (£250,000 — £333,000). The French fishermen 
of the North Sea and the Channel took in 1 88 1 f 39,000,000 
kilo, of Herrings, valued at about 9,000,000 francs 
(£360,000). The Iceland Herring-fishery of 1882 9 
yielded 50,000 barrels of a total value of £72,000. 
On the European side of the Atlantic the annual 
take of Herrings thus amounts to between 500,000,000 
and 600,000,000 kilo., and commands a market price 
of about £2,700,000. On the east coast of North Ame- 
rica, according to Hind 6 , Herrings were taken in 1874 
to a weight of about 91,000,000 kilo. No great accu- 
racy can be expected of all these calculations and esti- 
mates, but they give at least a notion of the value 
represented by the Herring, for all its cheapness. The 
welfare of nations has depended on the Herring- fishery ; 
and none need be surprised that this fishery has always 
been an apple of discord. 
Many are the culinary forms in which the Herring 
appears. In order to fit this cheap article of food for 
transportation from the place of its catch to the world’s 
ernporia, it has been the custom from time immemorial 
to dry, smoke, and salt the Herring; and the kitchen 
has taken measures accordingly. The Herring-fishery 
became an El Dorado to the Dutch when they learnt 
to gut the fish 1 — to remove the gill-arches and in- 
testine — before salting. But the Herring, like other 
fishes, is best and cheapest when fresh; and with the 
speedy means of transit and improved methods of pre- 
servation — borate or, still better, ice — now available, 
it may be conveyed to a considerable distance, and 
kept fresh for at least a fortnight or three weeks. In 
this condition it is excellent either boiled or fried. The 
English whitebait , the principal course at the fashionable 
dinners at Greenwich or Blackwall on the Thames, has 
a world-wide reputation. Whitebait consist chiefly of 
Herring-fry about two or three inches long, but also 
of Sprats, Sticklebacks, Gobies, and other small fishes. 
They are taken at flood-tide in spring and summer 
with a special kind of net, which is dipped a few feet 
below the surface from a boat anchored in 30 — 40 feet 
of water. They should, above all, be procured quite 
fresh and fried as soon as possible. They answer to 
the fiskakaga (fish-cake) of Scania and Halland, only 
that the latter is made into a cake by the addition of 
a greater quantity of butter or lard. In France White- 
bait are known as blanches ( blaquets ) or menis (me- 
nus ses). 
Herrings and Herring-fry are also much used as 
bait for other fishes. 
The numerous names by which the Herring is 
known in trade, and the details of the numerous me- 
thods employed in curing it for the market, cannot 
be given here. The reader who is interested in these 
questions will find an able treatment of them in 
L.tungman. 1 . c. 
a Drechsel, according to the “Dansk Fiskeriforenings Medlemsblad” 1892, pp. 74 and 75. 
h For the Norwegian Herring-fisheries and their fluctuations see H. Baars, Die Fisehereiindustrie Norwegens , Bergen 1873, p. 36. 
c The Central Bureau of Statistics at Christiania, according to the “Dansk Fiskeriforenings Medlemsblad” 1892, p. 490. 
d Fish Trades Gazette 1889, Jan. 12th and 26th. 
e According to an official statement, in the Catal. Gt. Intern. Fish. Exhib. London 1883, 1st ed., p. 422. 
J ibid., p. 384. 
‘J ibid., p. 382. 
h Br. -Goode, Fisher., Fisher. Industr. U. S., sect. I, p. 549. 
1 The discovery is ascribed by tradition to Willem Beukelzoon, a skipper from Biervliet in Flanders, d. 1387. 
