During the last quarter of a century the fishing industry has made great strides, the value of fish landed in Scotland having more than doubled in that period. Nowhere has the impetus been more felt than in Aberdeenshire, which now contributes as much as one-third of the whole product of Scotch fisheries. Since 1886 the weight of fish caught round the Scottish coast has increased from five million hundredweights to over nine millions, while the money value has risen in even a greater proportion from £1,403,391, to £3,149,127. To these totals Aberdeen alone has contributed over a hundred thousand tons of white fish (excluding herrings), valued at over a million pounds sterling. Peterhead and Fraserburgh are also contributors especially as regards herrings, the former landing 739,878 hundredweights and Fraserburgh very nearly a similar quantity. These three ports amongst them account for one half of all the fish landed at Scottish ports. When we consider the number of persons collaterally employed in handling this enormous quantity of merchandise, the coopers, cleaners, packers, basket makers, boat-builders, makers of nets, clerks and so on, apart altogether from the army of fishermen employed in catching the fish, we see how far-reaching this industry is, not merely in increasing the food-supply of the country but in providing profitable employment for the population. At Aberdeen, it is estimated, 13,512 persons are so employed and at the other two ports combined, almost a similar number. There are two great branches of the fishing industry—herrings and white fish. The herrings are caught for the most part, though not exclusively, in the summer, July being the great month. They are captured with nets mostly by steam-drifters as they are called, but also to some extent by the ordinary sailing boats of a smaller size than the drifters. Fraserburgh and Peterhead land in each case double the weight of herrings that come to Aberdeen. In recent years a beginning has been made in May and June with gratifying success, but July and August give the maximum returns. Later on in the year, when the shoals have moved along the coast southwards, the herring fleets follow them thither, to North Shields and Hartlepool, to Yarmouth and Lowestoft; and bands of curers, coopers and workers migrate in hundreds from one port to another, employing themselves in curing the fish. The bulk of the herrings are cured by salting, and are then exported to Germany and Russia, where they are much in demand.