the ravening waters, or is dashed against the rocky pillars of the shore, and the men sucked into the deep by the powerful waves. The sea is free to all, without tax and without rent, but the price paid in human life is a terrible equivalent:—“It is only they who go down to the sea in ships who see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep.” There has been a large amount of exaggeration as to the injury done to the white-fish fishery by the trawls. Fishermen who have neither the capital nor the enterprise to engage in trawling themselves are sure to abuse those who do; but the trawl is so formidable as to have induced various French writers to advocate its prohibition. They describe this instrument of the fishery as terrible in its effects, leaving, when it is used, deep furrows in the bottom of the sea, and crushing alike the fry and the spawn; but there is a very evident exaggeration in this charge, because as a general rule the beam-trawl cannot be worked with safety except on a sandy or muddy bottom, and, so far as we know, fish prefer to spawn on ground that is slightly rocky or weedy, so that the spawn may have something to adhere to, which it evidently requires in order to escape destruction; and when a quantity of spawn is discerned on a bit of seaweed or rock, we always find that, from some viscid property of which it is possessed, it adheres to its resting-place with great tenacity. The trawl-net, however destructive its agency, cannot, I fear, be dispensed with; and, used at proper seasons and at proper places, is the best engine of capture we can have for the kinds of fish which it is employed to secure. The trawl is very largely used by English fishermen, but it is only of late years that the trawlers have come so far north as Sunderland and Berwick, and it is the fishermen of these places who have got up the cry about that net being so injurious to the fisheries. In Scotland there are no resident trawlers, the fisheries being chiefly of the nature of a coasting industry, where the men, as a general rule, only go out to sea for a few hours and then return with their capture. Having been frequently on board of the trawling ships, I may perhaps be allowed to set down a few figures indicative of the power of the great beam-net. A trawler, then, is a vessel of about 35 tons burden, and usually carries 7 persons—viz. 5 men and 2 apprentices—as a crew to work her.[13] The trawl-rope is 120 fathoms in length and 6 inches in circumference, and to this rope are attached the different parts of the trawling apparatus—viz. the beam, the trawl-heads, bag-net, ground-rope, and span or bridle.