Authorities.—Green, Encyclopaedia of Scots Law (Edinburgh, 1896); Stewart, Law of Fishing in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1869); Woolrych, Waters (London, 1851); Paterson, Fishery Laws of the United Kingdom (London and Cambridge, 1863); Stuart Moore, Foreshore (London, 1888); Phillimore, International Law (3rd ed., London, 1879); Martens, Causes célèbres du droit des gens (Leipzig, 1827); Selwyn, Nisi Prius, Fishery (London, 1869). (G. G. P.*)
FISHGUARD (Abergwaun), a market town, urban district,
contributory parliamentary borough and seaport of Pembrokeshire,
Wales, near the mouth of the river Gwaun, which here
flows into Fishguard Bay of St George’s Channel. Pop. (1901)
2002. Its railway station, which is the chief terminus of the
South Wales system of the Great Western railway, is at the hamlet
of Goodwick across the bay, a mile distant to the south-west.
Fishguard Bay is deep and well sheltered from all winds save
those of the N. and N.E., and its immense commercial value has
long been recognized. After many years of labour and at a great
expenditure of money the Great Western railway has constructed
a fine breakwater and railway pier at Goodwick across the lower
end of the bay, and an important passenger and goods traffic with
Rosslare on the opposite Irish coast was inaugurated in 1906.
The importance of Fishguard is due to the local fisheries and the excellence of its harbour, and its early history is obscure. The chief historical interest of the town centres round the so-called “Fishguard Invasion” of 1797, in which year on the 22nd of February three French men-of-war with troops on board, under the command of General Tate, an Irish-American adventurer, appeared off Carreg Gwastad Point in the adjoining parish of Llanwnda. To the great alarm of the inhabitants a body of about 1400 men disembarked, but it quickly capitulated, practically without striking a blow, to a combined force of the local militias under Sir Richard Philipps, Lord Milford and John Campbell, Lord Cawdor; the French frigates meanwhile sailing away towards Ireland. For many years the castles and prisons of Haverfordwest and Pembroke were filled to overflowing with French prisoners of war. Close to the banks of the Gwaun is the pretty estate of Glyn-y-mel, for many years the residence of Richard Fenton (1746–1821), the celebrated antiquary and historian of Pembrokeshire.
FISHKILL LANDING, or Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, a village
of Fishkill township, Dutchess county, New York, U.S.A.,
about 58 m. N. of New York City, on the E. bank of the Hudson
river, opposite Newburgh. Pop. (1890) 3617; (1900) 3673,
of whom 540 were foreign-born; (1905) 3939; (1910) 3902,
of Fishkill township (1890) 11,840; (1900) 13,016; (1905)
13,183; (1910) 13,858. In the township are also the villages
of Matteawan (q.v.), Fishkill and Glenham. Fishkill Landing
is served by the New York Central & Hudson River and the
New York, New Haven & Hartford railways; by railway ferry
and passenger ferries to Newburgh, connecting with the West
Shore railway; by river steamboats and by electric railway
to Matteawan. Four miles farther N. on Fishkill Creek is
the village of Fishkill (incorporated in 1899), pop. (1905) 579.
In this village are two notable old churches, Trinity (1769),
and the First Dutch Reformed (1731), in which the New York
Provincial Congress met in August and September 1776.
At the old Verplanck mansion in Fishkill Landing the Society
of the Cincinnati was organized in 1783. Among the manufactures
of Fishkill Landing are rubber-goods, engines (Corliss)
and other machinery, hats, silks, woollens, and brick and tile.
The village of Fishkill Landing was incorporated in 1864. The
first settlement in the township was made about 1690. The
township of Fishkill was, like Newburgh, an important military
post during the War of Independence, and was a supply depot
for the northern Continental Army.
FISK, JAMES (1834–1872), American financier, was born at
Bennington, Vermont, on the 1st of April 1834. After a brief
period in school he ran away and joined a circus. Later he became
a hotel waiter, and finally adopted the business of his father,
a pedlar. He then became a salesman for a Boston dry goods
firm, his aptitude and energy eventually winning for him a share
in the business. By his shrewd dealing in army contracts during
the Civil War, and it is said by engaging in cotton smuggling,
he accumulated a considerable capital which he soon lost in
speculation. In 1864 he became a stockbroker in New York
and was employed by Daniel Drew as a buyer. He aided Drew
in his war against Vanderbilt for the control of the Erie railway,
and as a result of the compromise that was reached he and Jay
Gould became members of the Erie directorate. The association
with Gould thus began continued until his death. Subsequently
by a well-planned “raid,” Fisk and Gould obtained control
of the road. They carried financial “buccaneering” to extremes,
their programme including open alliance with the Tweed “ring,”
the wholesale bribery of legislatures and the buying of judges.
Their attempt to corner the gold market culminated in the
fateful Black Friday of the 24th of September 1869. Fisk was
shot and killed in New York City by E. S. Stokes, a former
business associate, on the 6th of January 1872.
FISK, WILBUR (1792–1839), American educationist, was
born in Brattleboro, Vermont, on the 31st of August 1792.
He studied at the university of Vermont in 1812–1814, and then
entered Brown University, where he graduated in 1815. He
studied law, and in 1817 came under the influence of a religious
revival in Vermont, where at Lyndon in the following year he
was licensed as a local preacher and was admitted to the New
England conference. His influence with the conference turned
that body from its opposition to higher education as immoral
in tendency to the establishment of secondary schools and
colleges. Upon the removal in 1824 of the conference’s academy
at New Market, New Hampshire, to Wilbraham, Massachusetts,
Fisk became one of its agents and trustees, and in 1826 its
principal. He drafted the report of the committee on education
to the general conference in 1828, at which time he declined
the bishopric of the Canada conference. He was first president
of Wesleyan University from the opening of the university in
1831 until his death on the 22nd of February 1839 in Middletown,
Connecticut. His successful administration of the Wesleyan
Academy at Wilbraham and of Wesleyan University were remarkable.
He was an able controversialist, and in the interests
of Arminianism attacked both New England Calvinism and
Unitarianism; he published in 1837 The Calvinistic Controversy.
He also wrote Travels on the Continent of Europe (1838).
See Life and Writings of Wilbur Fisk (New York, 1842), edited by Joseph Holdich, and the biography by George Prentice (Boston, 1890), in the American Religious Leaders Series; also a sketch in Memoirs of Teachers and Educators (New, York, 1861), edited by Henry Barnard.
FISKE, JOHN (1842–1901), American historical, philosophical
and scientific writer, was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on the
30th of March 1842, and died at Gloucester, Massachusetts, on
the 4th of July 1901. His name was originally Edmund Fiske
Green, but in 1855 he took the name of a great-grandfather,
John Fiske. His boyhood was spent with a grandmother in
Middletown, Connecticut; and prior to his entering college he
had read widely in English literature and history, had surpassed
most boys in the extent of his Greek and Latin work, and had
studied several modern languages. He graduated at Harvard in
1863, continuing to study languages and philosophy with zeal;
spent two years in the Harvard law school, and opened an office
in Boston; but soon devoted the greater portion of his time
to writing for periodicals. With the exception of one year,
he resided at Cambridge, Massachusetts, from the time of his
graduation until his death. In 1869 he gave a course of lectures
at Harvard on the Positive Philosophy; next year he was
history tutor; in 1871 he delivered thirty-five lectures on the
Doctrine of Evolution, afterwards revised and expanded as
Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874); and between 1872 and
1879 he was assistant-librarian. After that time he devoted
himself to literary work and lecturing on history. Nearly all
of his books were first given to the public in the form of lectures
or magazine articles, revised and collected under a general
title, such as Myths and Myth-Makers (1872), Darwinism and
Other Essays (1879), Excursions of an Evolutionist (1883), and
A Century of Science (1899). He did much, by the thoroughness
of his learning and the lucidity of his style, to spread a knowledge
of Darwin and Spencer in America. His Outlines of Cosmic
