Malacopteuous Abdominals.- 
144 
FISHES. Haleooids. 
and Flanders. Laws were made for the regulation 
of the fishery, and its commencement fixed to be on 
the feast of St. Michael (September 29), and its close 
on that of St. Martin (July 4). In 1128 Henry I. 
appointed a mayor to govern the burgh and the fishery, 
and to pay over to the crown a ro 3 'alty of ten thousand 
Herrings. Dunwich, then a strong walled town, paid 
twelve thousand to the monks of Ely, and twelve 
thousand to those of Eye ; but this tax was remitted 
by King John, owing to the town having gone to 
decay through the encroachments of the sea, which 
now flows over its site. An act called the “ Statute 
of Herrings” was passed in the reign of Edward III. 
lied Herrings and Bloaters seem to have been cured 
chiefly at Yarmouth, and the German commercial 
designation of them was “English Red Herrings in 
straw.” King John granted a charter to Yarmouth, of 
which one of the conditions was the presentation of 
twenty-four Herring-pies to the king through the 
sheriff of Norwich. Red Herrings are mentioned in 
an inquisition held in the reign of Henry HI. ; and in 
the time of Edward I. they were sent from Yarmouth 
to London by the last. The best pickled Herrings 
were then sold at twenty the penny, fifteen Eels brought 
the same price, and Soles were threepence a dozen. 
Edward H. wrote three letters to Haco VI. complaining 
of the arrest and oppression of certain English mer- 
chants trading to Norway with Herrings and other 
commodities. The Earl of Northumberland’s house- 
hold book, kept in the reign of Henry VII., mentions 
Whyt Herring, Rede Herring, Stockfish, Saltfish, Salt* 
Salmon, Salt Sturgeon, Salt Eels, &c., among the 
articles of diet to be provided for his famil}^ 
The Scotch Herring fishery was, according to 
Anderson, in a flourishing state in the days of Gregory 
the Great, contemporary with Alfred. Many acts of 
the Scottish parliament were passed between 1148 
and 1284 for its encouragement, and for providing 
salt for the same; and ever since the Herring 
fisher}' has been considered to be of great national 
importance. The curing of Red Herrings does not 
appear, however, to have been at any time carried on 
with success in Scotland, though attempts were made 
to introduce it. In the reign of James VI., a.d. 1613, 
Archibald Campbell was privileged to bring in strangers 
to make Red Herrings. 
Brill is the first port from wdience the Dutch 
carried on a regular Herring fishery, and its records 
go no farther back than 1164. The art of salting 
the fish was greatly improved by William Buckelz 
or Beukelen of Biervliet, who died in 1397. His 
process gave a pre-eminence to the Dutch cured Her- 
rings, which they still retain, and he was considered 
to be so great a benefactor to his country that the 
Emperor Charles V. honoured his memory by visiting 
his tomb. 
The earliest documents relating to the Herring 
fisheries of France are dated in 1030. The charter of 
the abbey of St. Catherine, near Rouen, mentions the 
existence in the valley of Dieppe of five salt-pans and 
five sheds {salines et mnsures) wherein five thousand 
Herrings were cured, and Robert, Duke of Normandy, 
granted to the abbey of Fdcamp, in 1088, permission 
to hold a fair during the Herring season. These 
Norman fisheries then, and for more than a century 
afterwards, supplied Herrings to Paris and the country 
drained by the Seine. In the year 1859 the Herring 
fishery carried on from Boulogne employed fifteen 
hundred men, one hundred and nine boats, and pro- 
duced four thousand five hundred and fourteen lasts of 
fish,* valued at £118,000. 
In 1855 Scotland cured seven hundred and sixty-six 
thousand barrels of pickled Herrings, and exported 
half of that quantity — employing in the business forty 
thousand seaman, eleven thousand boats, and twenty- 
eight thousand curers and labourers. The average 
annual produce of the Scotch Herring fishery for forty- 
three years is four hundred and sixteen thousand barrels. 
The general sea-fisheries of Ireland, when most flourish- 
ing, employ about ninety-three thousand people ; but in 
1856 the number so engaged was only forty-seven thou- 
sand, and of the boats, twelve thousand. London 
receives annually, at Billingsgate, two hundred and 
seventy-eight millions of Bloaters,j' and fifty millions of 
Red Herrings. 
As the Herring has not been observed to pass 
Rochelle in the Bay of Biscay, the southern limit of its 
range may be stated at about the forty-sixth parallel of 
latitude, and some minor sculls only go so far ; few of 
any consequence passing the capes of Normandy on the 
forty-eighth parallel. Its chief haunts are the seas 
encircling the British isles, or washing the coasts of 
Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, including the Baltic. 
It is comparatively a scarce fish on the coasts of Iceland, 
and though Herrings occur in the Arctic seas, they are 
of small size, and their specific identity with the true 
Herring has not been established by a careful compa- 
rison of specimens. The Halecoid called the Pierring 
on the Atlantic coasts of North America, is, according 
to M. Valenciennes, a different species from the Euro- 
pean one. The notion formerly entertained of the 
Herring descending from under the Polar ice in vast 
columns to the localities we have named, and then 
retiring again to the north to breed, was not founded 
on exact observation, and has been abandoned. On 
the contrary, it is certain that these fishes do spawn in 
the Channel, and in the bays and fiords that they enter ; 
the eggs having often been found by fishermen adher- 
ing to sea-weeds, oystei’-shells abandoned by the 
molluscs, and other substances lying at the bottom of 
the water; and the Herrings themselves have been 
occasionally observed, in shallow water, within half a 
mile of the shore, rubbing their bodies against stones 
with such vivacity, to promote the expulsion of the 
roe, as to detach part of their scales, while towards 
sun-rise the quantity of milky secretion from the milt 
gave a tinge to a great extent of sea. After the Her- 
rings have deposited their eggs, they put out to sea, 
and do not return again towards the shore except in 
small sculls. A few stray ones sometimes ascend a river 
to the fresh-water, and instances of such occurrences 
» A last of Herrings contains twent}' cades, or a thousand, 
every thousand ten hundred, and every hundred six score. Of 
unpacked Herrings, eighteen barrels make a last. — (Mortimer’s 
Dictionary of Commerce.) 
t “Blote,” according to Hallowel, means “dried;” and 
“ bloat,” “ dried in smoke.” 
