A well-peopled _bouchot_ usually yields, according to the length of its sides, from 400 to 500 loads of mussels—that is at the rate of a load per metre. A load weighs 150 kilogrammes (about 3 cwts.), and sells for 5 francs. A single _bouchot_, therefore, bears about 60,000 or 75,000 kilogrammes annually in weight, of the value of from 2000 to 2500 francs. The whole harvest of these _bouchots_ would therefore weigh from 30 to 35 millions of kilogrammes, which would yield a revenue of something like a million francs. I hope this plan of mussel-culture will speedily be adopted on our own coasts; it would be a saving of both time and money to the fishermen, who cannot do without bait in large quantities, seeing that the number of hooks required for the line-fishing has so largely increased during late years. The procuring of the necessary quantity of mussels is sometimes impossible; and when that is the case the men cannot proceed to the fishing, but have to remain at home in forced idleness till the bait can be obtained. This plan of growing the mussels might be easily adopted by our fisher-folks, whom it is now my province to describe. CHAPTER X. THE FISHER-FOLK. The Fisher-People the same everywhere—Growth of a Fishing Village—Marrying and giving in Marriage—The Fisher-Folks’ Dance—Newhaven near Edinburgh—Newhaven Fishwives—A Fishwife’s mode of doing Business—Superstitions—Fisherrow—Dunbar—Buckhaven—Cost of a Boat and its Gear—Scene of the _Antiquary_: Auchmithie—Smoking Haddocks—The Round of Fisher Life—“Finnan Haddies”—Fittie and its quaint Inhabitants—Across to Dieppe—Bay of the Departed—The Eel-Breeders of Comacchio—The French Fishwives—Narrative of a Fishwife—Buckie—Nicknames of the Fisher-Folk—Effects of a Storm on the Coast. A book professing to describe the harvest of the sea must of necessity have a chapter about the quaint people who gather in the harvest, otherwise it would be like playing “Hamlet” without the hero. I have a considerable acquaintance with the fisher-folk; and while engaged in collecting information about the fisheries, and in investigating the natural history of the herring and other food-fishes, have visited most of the Scottish fishing villages and many of the English ones, nor have I neglected Normandy, Brittany, and Picardy; and wherever I went I found the fisher-folk to be the same, no matter whether they talked a French _patois_ or a Scottish dialect, such as one may hear at Buckie on the Moray Firth, or in the _Rue de Pollet_ of Dieppe. The manners, customs, mode of life, and even the dress and superstitions, are nearly the same on the coast of France as they are on the coast of Fife, and used-up gentlemen in search of seaside sensations could scarcely do better than take a tour among the Scottish fisher-folks, in order to view the wonders of the fishing season, its curious industry, and the quaint people.