In the first Number of this Journal we showed the intimate connexion between fishermen and life-boats, and stated that in the fisheries of the United Kingdom there were employed on the 1st January, 1850, the large number of 36,000 boats, manned by 150,000 men and boys. We understand that the extent of these numbers has caused some doubts as to their accuracy, in quarters in which it is specially professed to care for fishermen, and, therefore, ought to be well informed on the subject. We can, however, assure our readers that they may confidently rely upon the correctness of the accounts, as they are taken from official tables. But if some have been surprised at the above num- bers, they will be more so at those we are about to lay before them, relative to the herring and cod fisheries of Great Britain, to which we must confine ourselves at the present moment; at some future time we hope to be able to give similar statements for Ireland, as also of our Cornish pilchard fisheries. We may, too, have something to say respecting a system of mutual insurance for fishermen of the supply of cheap but wholesome fish for the poor, of the enor- mous increase in the demand for fish, owing to the facility of transport offered by railroads, and not impossibly may have a tale to tell of a fleet of screw-propelled fishing-boats em- ployed in the cod fishery on the Dogger Bank, in the North Sea! For the present, however, we are limited to the following extracts from the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851; a work which, for extent and variety of information, its mar- vellous arrangement, and beauty of type and illustration, does honour to its compilers, and its spirited printers and publishers.

"STATISTICS of the HERRING and COD FISHERIES, drawn up by Mr. JOHN MILLER, General Inspector of FISHERIES in SCOTLAND. Communicated by Captain WASHINGTON, R.N., F.R.S., and Col.

COLQUHOUN, R.A., F.R.S." The official Report of the Herring and Cod Fisheries on the Coast of Great Britain, for the year 1849, affords the following statistics, which may serve to show the importance of this branch of national industry.

Number of vessels and boats employed . 14,692 Tonnage 214,858 Number of men and boys in the boats . 59,792 Number of persons employed curing . 46,254 Making and mending nets, getting bait, &c. 119,696 Grand total to whom the fishery gives em- ployment .... 225,742 Wages of men vary from 12s. to 15s. a week. Value of a first-class open boat complete, 100Z.; 25 nets complete, 100Z. ; set of lines, 231.: total 223Z.

The capital embarked in the fisheries is as follows :— £.

Value of boats, nets, and lines employed 1,189,090 Capital embarked equal to one year's produce 2,191,325 Capital invested on shore in curing place, &c 2,191,325 Value of 81,791 tons of shipping, at SI.

per ton, employed in carrying . 736,119 Grand total invested . . £6,307,859 Except in short spaces the herring fishery is prosecuted around the whole coasts of England and Scotland. The length of the season varies, but may be considered from the middle of May to the beginning of March.

The produce of the herring fishery in 1849 was, in barrels . . . 1,151,979 The produce of the cod fishery was . 381,778 Total produce in barrels . 1,533,757 Computed weight, allowing seven barrels to the ton, 219,108 tons.

Local consumption and home market dispose of 1,093,501 barrels.

Foreign consumption, 440,256 barrels.

Price of cured fish 20s. a barrel, chiefly consumed by the poor.

Estimated average value of the fish caught, 2,191,325?.

Largest number of fish taken at one haul, 120 barrels. A single boat in one season has caught 1,000 barrels, and nightly spreads nets to the extent of 21,000 square yards.

A crew of eight men in the cod fishery use 7,680 yards of line with 6,400 hooks.

The quantity of netting set each night (for five nights each week) and hauled every morning is 94,916,584 square yards, equal to 19,640 acres, or to 36 square miles.

These nets when set extend over a space o f about 6,000 lineal miles, and are, on an average, from seven to nine yards deep in the sea. The boats daily traverse about ten times the above space in proceeding to the fishing ground, setting and hauling the nets, and then returning to port. Thus in one week the distance sailed by the British her- ring and cod boats exceeds 300,000 miles.

The length of fishing-lines and buoy-ropes daily used is 36,313,706 yards, or 20,632 miles, which would nearly reach round the globe.

In the district of Wick, Caithness, the net- ting daily set and hauled by 800 boats would extend in a straight line to about 590 miles, or would reach from Caithness to the island of Heligoland. Tet on this coast, for 12 miles in extent, there are only three small tidal harbours, inaccessible at low water or with an easterly gale, and distant 50 miles from a safe anchorage; while the value of the boats and nets at sea every night for three months in the year is 150,000?., no part of which is insured, and all the property of poor fisher- men, the greater part of whom are not even members of the Shipwrecked Fishermen's Benevolent Society. It would be a public benefit were the Mercantile Marine Act attended to fishermen as well as seamen, so as to compel them to lay by something against casualties, for as a class there are none more exposed, none undergo greater hardships, none more improvident, and none more thoughtless of the future..