marketed. The fishing is carried on from February to August, and samples taken in the successive months were found to contain the percentages of herrings, the remainder being young sprats: 7, 5, 14, 30, 87, 75, 52. Hence it will be seen that sprats predominated in February, March, April and May, herrings in June and July. There is reason to believe that these young herrings are derived from a local "winter" race spawning about February and March, and having nothing to do with the great shoals of the more open sea spawning in the North Sea in November. The Thames being unequal to the supply of the large demand for this delicacy, large quantities of whitebait are now brought to London and other markets from many parts of the coast. In times past whitebait were considered to be peculiar to the estuary of the Thames; and, even after the specific identification of Thames whitebait with the young of the herring and sprat, it was still thought that there was a distinctive superiority in its condition and flavour. It is possible that the young fish find in the estuary of the Thames a larger amount of suitable food than on other parts of the coast, where the water may be of greater purity, but possesses less abundance of the minute animal life on which whitebait thrive. Indeed, Thames whitebait which have been compared with that from the mouth of the Exe, the Cornish coast, Menai Strait, and the Firth of Forth seemed to be better fed; but, of course, the specific characteristics of the herring and the sprat—into which we need not enter here—were nowise modified.
The fry of fishes is used as an article of diet in almost every country: in Germany the young of various species of Cyprinoids, in Italy and Japan the young of nearly every fish capable of being readily captured in sufficient numbers, in the South Sea Islands the fry of Teuthis, in New Zealand young Galaxias are consumed in certain seasons in large quantities; and, like whitebait, these fry bear distinct names, different from those of the adult fish.
Whitebait are caught on the flood-tide from boats moored in from 3 to 5 fathoms. The net used is a bag some 20 ft. long, narrow and small-meshed towards the tail end, the mouth being kept open in the direction of the advancing tide by a framework 3 or 4 ft. square. It is placed alongside the boat and sunk to a depth of 4 ft. below the surface; from time to time the end of the bag is lifted into the boat, to empty it of its contents. The "schools" of whitebait advancing and retiring with the tide for days, and probably for weeks, have to run the gauntlet of a dozen of these nets, and therefore get very much thinned in number by the end of the season. When the view commenced to gain ground that the whitebait were largely young herring, the question arose whether or not the immense destruction of the young brood caused by this mode of fishing injuriously affected the fishery of the mature herring. This perhaps it does; but, since it has been ascertained that the herring is much more restricted in its migrations than were formerly believed, and that the shoals are to a great extent local, the injury, such as it is, must be local and limited to the particular district in which the fishing for whitebait is methodically practised. Similar reasoning applies to sprats.
(J. T. C.)
WHITEFIELD, GEORGE (1714-1770), English religious leader, was born on the 16th of December 1714 at the Bell Inn, Gloucester, of which his father was landlord. At about twelve
years of age he was sent to the school of St Mary de Crypt,
Gloucester, where he developed some skill in elocution and a
taste for reading plays, a circumstance which probably had
considerable influence on his subsequent career.
At the age of
fifteen he was taken from school to assist his mother in the
public-house, and for a year and a half was a common drawer.
He then again returned to school to prepare for the university, and in 1733 entered as a servitor at Pembroke College, Oxford, graduating in 1736. There he came under the influence of the Methodists (see Wesley), and entered so enthusiastically into their practices and habits that he was attacked by a severe illness, which compelled him to return to his native town. His
enthusiastic piety attracted the notice of Martin Benson, bishop of Gloucester, who ordained him deacon on the 20th of June 1736. He then began an evangelizing tour in Bath, Bristol and other towns, his eloquence at once attracting immense multitudes.
In 1736 he was invited by Wesley to go out as missionary to Georgia, and went to London to wait on the trustees. Before setting sail he preached in some of the principal London churches, and in order to hear him, crowds assembled at the church doors long before daybreak. On the 28th of December 1737 he embarked for Georgia, which he reached on the 7th of May 1738. After three months' residence there he returned to England to receive priest's orders, and to raise contributions for the establishment of an orphanage. As the clergy did not welcome him to their pulpits, he began to preach in the open air. At Kingswood Hill, Bristol, his addresses to the colliers soon attacted crowds, and his voice was so clear and powerful that it could reach 20,000 folk. His fervour and dramatic action held them spell-bound, and his homely pathos soon broke down all barriers of resistance. "The first discovery of their being affected," he says, "was by seeing the white gutters made by their tears, which plentifully fell down their black cheeks." In 1738 an account of Whitefield's voyage from London to Georgia was published without his knowledge. In 1739 he published his Journal from his arrival in Savannah to his return to London, and also his Journal from his arrival in London to his departure thence on his way to Georgia. As his embarkation was further delayed for ten weeks he published A Continuation of the Rev. Mr Whitefield's Journal during the Time he was delayed in England by the Embargo: His unfavourable reception in England by the clergy led him to make reprisals. To Joseph Trapp's attack on the Methodists he published in 1739 A Preservative against Unsettled Notions, in which the clergy of the Church of England were denounced with some bitterness; he also published shortly afterwards The Spirit and Doctrine and Lives of our Modern Clergy, and a reply to a pastoral letter of the bishop of London in which he had been attacked. In the same year appeared Sermons on Various Subjects (2 vols.), the Church Companion, or Sermons on Several Subjects, and a recommendatory epistle to the Life of Thomas Halyburton. He again embarked for America in August 1739, and remained there two years, preaching in all the principal towns. He left his incumbency of Savannah to a lay delegate and the commissary's court at Charleston suspended him for ceremonial irregularities. While there he published Three Letters from Mr Whitefield, in which he referred to the "mystery of iniquity" in Tillotson, and asserted that that divine knew no more of Christ than Mahomet did.
During his absence from England Whitefield found that a divergence of doctrine from Calvinism had been introduced by Wesley; and notwithstanding Wesley's exhortations to brotherly kindness and forbearance he withdrew from the Wesleyan connexion. Thereupon his friends built for him near Wesley's church a wooden structure, which was named the Moorfields Tabernacle. A reconciliation between the two great evangelists was soon effected, but each thenceforth went his own way. In 1741, on the invitation of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, he paid a visit to Scotland, commencing his labours in the Secession meeting-house, Dunfermline. But, as he refused to limit his ministrations to one sect, the Seceders and he parted company, and without their countenance he made a tour through the principal towns of Scotland, the authorises of which in most instances presented him with the freedom of the burgh, in token of their estimate of the benefits to the community resulting from his preaching. From Scotland he went to Wales, where on the 14th of November he married a widow named James. The marriage was not a happy one. On his return to London in 1742 he preached to the crowds in Moorfields during the Whitsun holidays with such effect as to attract nearly all the people from the shows. After a second visit to Scotland, June-October 1742 (where at Cambuslang in particular he wielded a great spiritual influence), and a tour through England and Wales, 1742-1744, he embarked in August 1744 for America, where he remained till June 1748. On returning to London he found his congregation at the Tabernacle dispersed; and his circumstances were so depressed that he was obliged to sell his household furniture to pay his orphan-house debts. Relief soon came through his acquaintance with Selina, countess of Huntingdon (q.v.), who appointed him one of her chaplains.
