The Dutch use lines 500 feet in length, with fifty or more nets to each. The upper part of these nets is buoyed with empty barrels or cork, while they are kept down by lead or stone weights; they can be lowered by lengthening the cord to which the buoys are attached. The meshes of the nets are so arranged that if the herring is too small to be caught in the first meshes, he passes through and gets caught in the succeeding one. Dr. Bertram went out in a Wick boat to the fishing grounds. He says:—“At last, after a lengthened cruise, our commander, who had been silent for half an hour, jumped up and called to action. ‘Up men, and at them!’ was the order of the night. The preparations for shooting the nets at once began by lowering sail. Surrounding us on all sides was to be seen a moving world of boats; many with sails down, their nets floating in the water, and their crews at rest. Others were still flitting uneasily about, their skippers, like our own, anxious to shoot in the right place. By‐and‐by we were ready; the ‘dog,’ a large inflated bladder to mark the far end of the train, is heaved overboard, and the nets, breadth after breadth, follow as fast as the men can pay them out, till the immense train is all in the water, forming a perforated wall a mile long and many feet in depth, the ‘dog’ and the marking bladder, floating and dipping in long zig‐zag lines, reminding one of the imaginary coils of the great sea‐serpent. After three hours of quietude beneath a beautiful sky, the stars— “The eternal orbs that beautify the night”— began to pale their fires, and the grey dawn appearing indicated that it was time to take stock. We found that the boat had floated quietly with the tide till we were a long distance from the harbour. The skipper had a presentiment that there were fish in his net, and the bobbing down of a few of the bladders made it almost a certainty; and he resolved to examine the drifts. ‘Hurrah!’ exclaimed Murdoch of Skye; ‘there’s a lot of fish, skipper, and no mistake.’ Murdoch’s news was true; our nets were silvery with herrings—so laden, in fact, that it took a long time to haul them in. It was a beautiful sight to see the shimmering fish as they came up like a sheet of silver from the water, each uttering a weak death‐chirp as it was flung into the bottom of the boat. Formerly the fish were left in the meshes of the net till the boat arrived in the harbour; but now, as the net is hauled on board, they are at once shaken out. As our silvery treasure showers into the boat, we roughly guess our capture at fifty cranes—a capital night’s work.” Wick boats are not, however, always so fortunate. The herring fleet has been overtaken more than once by fearful storms, when valuable lives, boats, and nets, have been sacrificed.