dog. Now, I had to alight short of their destination,
and, as that stoppage of the train was
attended with a quantity of horn blowing, bell ringing,
and proclamation of what Messieurs les
Voyageurs were to do, and were not to do, in
order to reach their respective destinations, I
had ample leisure to go forward on the platform
to take a parting look at my recruits,
whose heads were all out at window, and who
were laughing like delighted children. Then, I
perceived that a large poodle with a pink nose,
who had been their travelling companion, and
the cause of their mirth, stood on his hind-
legs presenting arms on the extreme verge of
the platform, ready to salute them as the train
went off. This poodle wore a military shako
(it is unnecessary to add, very much on one
side over one eye), a little military coat, and
the regulation white gaiters. He was armed
with a little musket and a little sword-bayonet,
and he stood presenting arms in perfect attitude,
with his unobscured eye on his master or
superior officer, who stood by him. So admirable
was his discipline, that, when the train moved,
and he was greeted with the parting cheers of
the recruits, and also with a shower of centimes,
several of which struck his shako, and had a
tendency to discompose him, he remained staunch
on his post until the train was gone. He then
resigned his arms to his officer, took off his
shako by rubbing his paw over it, dropped on
four legs, bringing his uniform-coat into the
absurdest relations with the overarching skies,
and ran about the platform in his white gaiters,
wagging his tail to an exceeding great extent.
It struck me that there was more waggery than
this in the poodle, and that he knew that the
recruits would neither get through their
exercises, nor get rid of their uniforms, as easily as
he; revolving which in my thoughts, and seeking
in my pockets some small money to bestow
upon him, I casually directed my eyes to the
face of his superior officer, and in him beheld the
Face-Maker! Though it was not the way to
Algeria, but quite the reverse, the military
poodle's Colonel was the Face-Maker in a dark
blouse, with a small bundle dangling over his
shoulder at the end of an umbrella, and taking
a pipe from his breast to smoke as he and the
poodle went their mysterious way.

HERRINGS IN THE LAW'S NET.

THE ancients placed among their gods many
a worse creature than a red herring. Often to
the poor Lancashire meal of bread and tea, from
which the luxuries of butter, and of milk and
sugar, have perforce been banished, the penny
herring, as good relishable victual as any tit-bit
that the Bank of England could be paid away for,
has given a brisk, wholesome savour. Throughout
whole counties of England are (unless the
world has mended with them of late years)
bronzed labouring men and women to whom, and
to their children, herring and bacon are, in the
way of meat, almost the sole companions of the
daily bread or potatoes. Our herrings are the
very life of thousands of fishermen. On the
poorer Scotch coasts, since the failure of the
potato crop, it is Jupiter Herring who makes
fast the house for those ashore. But among
British legislators Herring worship has
degenerated into hurtful superstition. What that
superstition is, and what harm comes of it,
know all men by these presents.

Until of late years the herring fishery had
been carried on solely by intercepting the shoals
of the fish in their course, with drift-nets. An
Act of Parliament, as old as the year eighteen
hundred and nine, ordained that the meshes of
such nets should be not less than an inch square.
That has remained ever since, the usual and legal
size of mesh. It lets the small fry pass, it does
not admit the largest fish, but it catches those
which are just of the size to stick fast in the
act of passing through a mesh. They remain
fixed in the position of swimming,—whereby, it is
said, their capture does not attract the attention
of the shoal,—and when hauled up in the morning
they require no sorting, but are all fish of the
same size, ready for the curer.

Now, it has come to pass that within the last
dozen years a profitable innovation, hitherto
confined among us to some parts of the coast
of Scotland, but long customary in Norway,
Labrador, &c., has found favour with some
fishers. But it has been denounced so loudly by
the previously existing interest, that it has been
fought against with Acts of Parliament, and
fought against (as we are now told by the report
of a commission appointed to inquire into the
subject) to the detriment alike of the fish, the
fishermen, and the fish-eating public. Laws
passed in error are still unrepealed. The
manner of fishing that has been, and still is,
unjustly interdicted, will have many prejudices
to encounter, and many enmities to overcome,
even after the legislative ban shall have been
lifted from it. It is well, therefore, that all
should know what new light has been thrown of
late upon the subject of this one very particular
friend of the poor.

The light shines from a Parliamentary report
issued by Dr. Playfair, Professor Huxley, and
Colonel Maxwell, after an official cruise in search
of evidence. In Loch Fyne, the head-quarters
of the disputed question, the commissioners
spent nearly a month taking evidence from
experts and persons variously interested in the
fisheries; they visited also the other fishing
stations on the coast of Scotland.

Orthodoxy in catching herrings consists, as we
have said, in the use of drift-nets with an inch
square mesh. The Scotch fisherman's boat,
which has sails as well as oars, and costs, according
to its size, from twenty to a hundred pounds,
carries from three to six men, and from six to
sixteen barrels of net. The net is measured by
the barrel: a barrel holding about a hundred
yards, which, mounted and buoyed, will be worth
four or five pounds. The nets of the several
barrels are joined together by a rope, so that the
net wall, when spread, varies from six hundred to