This is true; the best boats and the strongest and most intelligent fishermen have removed for a time to distant fishing-towns to engage in the capture of the herring, which forms, during the summer months, a noted industrial feature on the coasts of Scotland, and allures to the scene all the best fishermen, in the hope that they may gain a prize in the great herring-lottery, prizes in which are not uncommon, as some boats will take fish to the extent of two hundred barrels in the course of a week or two. Only a few decrepit old men are left to try their luck with the cod and haddock lines; the result being, as I have stated above, a scarcity of white and flat fish, which is beginning to be felt in greatly enhanced prices. An intelligent Newhaven fishwife recently informed me that the price of white fish in Edinburgh—a city close to the sea—has been more than quadrupled within the last thirty years. She remembers when the primest haddocks were sold at about one penny per pound weight, and in her time herrings have been so plentiful that no person would purchase them. We shall not soon look again on such times. The cod and haddock fishery is a laborious occupation. At Buckie, a quaint fishing-town on the Moray Firth, which I will by and by describe, it is one of the staple occupations of the people. At that, little port there are generally about thirty or forty large boats engaged in the fishery, as well as a number of smaller craft used to fish inshore. These boats, which measure from thirty to forty feet, are, with the necessary hooks and lines, of the value of about £100. Each boat is generally the property of a joint-stock company, and has a crew of eight or nine individuals, who all claim an equal share in the fish captured. The Buckie men often go a long distance, forty or fifty miles, to a populous fishing-place, and are absent from home for a period of fifteen or twenty hours. At many of the fishing villages from which herring or cod boats depart, there is no proper harbour, and at such places the sight of the departing fleet is a most animated one, as all hands, women included, have to lend their aid in order to expedite the launching of the little fleet, as the men who are to fish must be kept dry and comfortable. Even at places where there is a harbour, it is often not used, many of the boats being drawn up for convenience on what is called the boat-shore. At Cockenzie, near Edinburgh, several of the boats are still drawn up in this rude way, and the women not only assist in launching and drawing up the boats, but they sell the produce taken by each crew by auction to the highest bidder—the purchasers usually being buyers on speculation, who send off the fish by train to Edinburgh, Manchester, or London.