The herring hardly needs description here, but it may just be remarked, _en passant_, that its back, indigo‐coloured after death, is greenish during life. The curious markings often found on the herring have been considered by ignorant fishermen to signify mysterious words of cabalistic import. On one November day, near three hundred years ago, two herrings were caught on the coast of Norway, which bore marks resembling Gothic printed characters. “They were presented to the then King of Norway, Frederick II., who was so frightened by the characters he saw on the backs of the innocent fish that he turned ghastly pale, for he thought that they announced his approaching death and that of his queen.” A council of _savants_ was convened, and the learned ones solemnly reported that the words implied, “Very soon you will cease to fish herrings, as well as other people.” Some more politic scientists gave another explanation, but it was useless, for the king died next year, and his late subjects became firmly convinced that the two herrings had been celestial messengers charged to announce that monarch’s sudden end. The herring abounds in the entire Northern Ocean from the coasts of France and England to Greenland and Lapland. They are very gregarious, and travel in immense shoals, their appearance in any specified locality being uncertain and always sudden. On the coast of Norway the electric telegraph is used to announce to the fishing towns the approach of the shoals, which can always be perceived at a distance by the wave they raise. In the fiords of Norway the herring fisheries are the principal means of existence for the seaboard population. So in 1857 the paternal Norwegian Government laid a submarine cable round the coast 100 miles in length, with stations ashore at intervals conveniently placed for the purpose of notifying the fishermen. In Holland the industries of catching and curing the fish are highly profitable; the fishery is in consequence known as “the great,” while whaling is known as the “small fishery.” To a simple Dutch fisherman, George Benkel, who died in 1397, Holland owes the introduction of the art of preserving and curing the herring. Two hundred years after his death, the Emperor Charles V. solemnly ate a herring on his tomb, as homage to the memory of the creator of a great national industry. [Illustration: THE HERRING (_Clupea harengus_).] In our country there is also an important trade in the fish. Yarmouth sends out 400 vessels of from forty to sixty tons, the larger carrying a crew of twelve. In 1857 three fishing boats of this seaport brought home 3,762,000 fish. In Scotland the one town of Wick had a few years ago 920 boats employed in the fisheries.