days in Holland, and industrious as the Dutch undoubtedly were, it is evident that there has been a considerable amount of exaggeration as to the results, more especially in regard to the enormous quantities of fish that are said to have been captured and cured. But whatever this total might be was not of great consequence. The mere quantity of fish caught is perhaps, although a considerable one, the smallest of the many benefits conferred on a nation by an energetic pursuit of its fisheries. The fishermen must have boats, and these must be fitted with sails, rigging, etc.; and, moreover, the boats must be manned by an efficient crew; then the curing and sale of the fish give employment to a large number of people as well; whilst the articles of cure—as salt, barrels, etc.—must of necessity be largely provided, and are all of them the result of some kind of trained industry: and all these varied circumstances of demand combine to feed the particular industrial pursuit I am describing. And the fisheries provide, besides, a grand nursery for seamen, which is, perhaps, in a country like ours, having a powerful navy, the greatest of all the benefits conferred. I have taken the pains to collate as many of the figures of the Dutch fishery as I could collect during an industrious search, and I find that, in the zenith of its prosperity, after the proclamation of the independence of the States of Holland, three thousand boats were employed in her own bays, while sixteen hundred herring busses fished industriously in British waters, while eight hundred larger vessels prosecuted the cod and whale fisheries at remote distances. In the year 1603 we are informed that the Dutch sold herrings to the amount of £4,759,000, besides what they themselves consumed. We are also told that in 1618 they had twelve thousand vessels engaged in this branch of the fishery, and that these ships employed about two hundred thousand men. It must have been a splendid sight, on every 24th of June, to witness the departure of the great fleet from the Texel; and as most of the Dutch people were more or less interested in the prosperity of the fishery, either as labourers or employers of labour, there would be no lack of spectators on these occasions. The Wick herring drave of twelve hundred boats is, as I will by and by endeavour to show, an industrial sight of no common kind, but it must give way before the picturesque fleet of Holland, as it sailed away from the Texel about three hundred years ago.