It is quite according to the nature of the herrings to resume their visits as suddenly and unexpectedly as they have broken them off, though not until after a lapse of so many seasons, that the fishermen have ceased to watch for their appearance in their old haunts, or to provide the tackle necessary for their capture; and in this way a number of years are sometimes suffered to pass after the return of the fish, ere the old trade is re-established. It was a main object with William Forsyth to guard against any such waste of opportunity on the part of his town’s-people; and representing the case to the more intelligent gentlemen of the district, and some of the wealthier merchants of Inverness, he succeeded in forming them, for the encouragement of the herring fishery, into a society, which provided a yearly premium of twenty merks Scots for the first barrel of herrings caught every season in the Moray Firth. The sum was small; but as money at the time was greatly more valuable than now, it proved a sufficient inducement to the fishermen and tradespeople of the place to fit out, about the beginning of autumn every year, a few boats that swept over the various fishing banks for the herrings; and there were not many seasons in which some one crew or other did not catch enough to entitle them to the premium. At length, however, their tackle wore out, and Mr. Forsyth, in pursuance of his scheme, provided himself, at some little expense, with a complete _drift_ of nets, which were carried to sea each season by a crew of boatmen, and the search kept up. His exertions, however, could only merit success, without securing it. The fish returned for a few seasons in considerable bodies, and the fishermen procuring nets, several thousand barrels were caught; but they soon deserted the Firth as entirely as before. It was at the period of this second return that the “Herring Fishery,” according to Goldsmith, “employed all Grub Street;” and “formed the topic of every coffee-house, and the burden of every ballad.” The sober English of the times of George II. had got sanguine on the subject, and hope had broken out into poetry. They were “to drag up oceans of gold from the bottom of the sea, and to supply all Europe with herrings on their own terms;” but their expectations outran the capabilities of the speculation; “they fished up very little gold” that the essayist “ever heard of, nor did they furnish the world with herrings.” Their herring fishery turned out in short to be a mere herring fishery, and not even that for any considerable length of time. [Sidenote: THE CAITHNESS-MAN’S LEAP.]