From the little ports of the Moray Firth, the men, as I have said, have to go long distances to fish for cod and ling. As they have none but open boats, it will easily be understood that they live hard upon such occasions. They are sometimes absent from home for about a week at a stretch, and as the weather is often very inclement the men suffer severely. The fish are not so easily procured as in former years, so that the remuneration for the labour undergone is totally inadequate. A large traffic in living codfish used to be carried on from Scotland; quick vessels furnished with wells took the cod alive as far as Gravesend, whence they were sent on to London as required. Although the railways have put an end to a good deal of this style of transport, some cargoes of cod have been carried alive all the way from the Rockall fishery to Gravesend. But the percentage of waste is necessarily enormous: however, it _pays_ to do this, and one result of the Rockall discovery has been the starting of a joint-stock company to work one of the large North Sea fisheries. The cod-bank at the Faroe Islands is now about exhausted; but the gigantic cod-fishery which has been carried on for two centuries on the banks of Newfoundland still continues to be prosecuted with great enterprise, although, according to reliable information, not with the success which characterised the fishery some years ago. In a few years more it will be quite possible to make a decided impression even on the cod-banks of Newfoundland. The Great Dogger Bank fishery has now become affected by overfishing, and the Rockall Bank fails to yield anything like the large “takes” with which it rewarded those who first despoiled it of its finny treasures. A gentleman who dabbles a little in fishing speculations writes me—“In 1862, I sent a fine smack to Rockall, and fish were in great plenty—some very large; but the weather is usually so bad, and the bank so exposed to the heavy seas of the North Atlantic, that the best and largest vessels fail to fish with profit in consequence of the wear and tear and delay. This will account in some degree for the cessation of enterprise as regards the Rockall fishery.” A writer in the _Quarterly Review_, a few years ago, said of the Dogger Bank:—“No better proof that its stores are failing could be given than the fact that, although the ground, counting the Long Bank and the north-west flat in its vicinity, covers 11,800 square miles, and that in fine weather it is fished by the London companies with from fifteen to twenty dozen of long lines, extending ten or twelve miles, and containing from 9000 to 12,000 hooks, it is not yet at all common to take even as many as fourscore of fish of a night—a poverty which can be better appreciated when we learn that 600 fish for 800 hooks is the catch for deep-sea fishing about Kinsale.” I cannot say much about the white-fish fisheries of Ireland from personal knowledge, but I have been informed