BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
6 
topsail and a jibsail are employed. The sails are either linen or cotton, the latter 
being used in summer fishing. Linen sails are tanned brown with catechu and cotton 
sails are colored with ocher. 
The oars are large and heavy, 33 feet long, with a very small, narrow blade, and a 
square butt about b inches in diameter. Owing to the great length of the oar, the butt 
is large and heavy in order to balance the oar when in use, and stones are sometimes 
piled on it in rowing. There are four oars to a boat, each used by one man. 
NETS. 
In parts of Brittany nets were formerly used to surround the schools, and then 
stones were thrown in to frighten the fish into the meshes. In this way large catches 
were often made and the market was glutted; but the method came into disrepute and 
is no longer followed. Fishing is now carried on exclusively with gill nets made 
of very tine cotton twine. Some of the nets come from Germany, and some are made 
locally, at Nantes and Douarnenez. Those from Germany are cheaper. The nets are 
uniformly 45 yards long and 500 meshes deep. A change in depth has taken place 
within a comparatively few years; formerly they were only 200 to 300 meshes deep. 
The mesh is necessarily very small, as it is intended to gill the tinv sardines. Its size 
is determined or designated by stretching the meshes and measuring the distance 
apart of the first and last knots of a series of five — equivalent to two meshes. 
The nets vary in fineness to suit the different runs of sardines, and are of about 
three standard sizes. The largest mesh, designated 66 mm. (as measured according 
to foregoing rule), is equal, in America, to 0.66 inch, bar measure, while the smallest 
size, 40 mm., equals 0.40 inch, bar measure. The intermediate size is 52 mm. 
The complement of each boat is 10 nets, representing three sizes of mesh, adapted 
for small, medium, and large fish. When actively used the nets last only three or 
four months, but with proper care they often last six months, or even an entire sea- 
son. When rigged for use they are worth about 100 francs apiece. 
The nets are dyed a bright greenish blue, and when suspended from the masts to 
dry add to the picturesqueness of the fishing boats and the wharf scenes. The dyeing 
is for the twofold purpose of preserving the nets and rendering them less conspic- 
uous when in the water. The practice of dyeing the nets blue has been in vogue only 
a short time and appears to have begun shortly after the introduction of cotton nets. 
Formerly, when linen twine was employed, the nets were stained brown by tannin. 
The dye substance is an aniline, in the form of a powder, and 50 grams are used 
on one net. This quantity, with a little alum, is dissolved in enough hot water to 
thoroughly wet a net. The nets are soaked in the solution and spread out to dry 
before use. Fishermen are often seen with their hands and wrists stained a uniform 
blue from handling wet nets. The blue dye is reported to be better than tannin for 
cotton nets and to render nets less conspicuous. The dyeing is repeated from time 
to time as the color becomes soaked out. 
The nets are kept in position in the water by numerous cork floats and a few 
sinkers. The corks are 4 inches in diameter and half an inch thick, and about 400 
are used with each net. For about feet below the cork line the net consists of 
coarser twine of large mesh, to give strength, as, owing to the method of fishing, this 
part of the net is subjected to great strain. The lower edge of the net for a depth 
of 3 or 4 inches is also of coarse twine, to support the stone sinkers, two or three 
sinkers about the size of a man’s fist being attached to each net. 
