352 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



families. For some years, the dog-fish has afforded lucrative employ- 

 ment during the whole of the summer to the fishermen from the Naze 

 to the Cape. It is, however, mostly smoked, and in this way is con- 

 sidered rather a delicacy. It is also dried and split as stock-fish for 

 consumption in the country, as well as for export to Sweden, where it 

 is greatly appreciated. It is likewise elsewhere a common article of 

 food, amid the choice of a variety of other fish, especially in the west 

 of England, and, indeed, is valued by some who are far above the 

 necessity of classing it with their ordinary articles of subsistence. It 

 is used both fresh and salted, but, when eaten fresh, it is skinned before 

 being cooked. Lacipede, who speaks slightingly of its flesh, informs 

 us that, in the north of Europe, the eggs, which are about the size of 

 a small orange, and consist solely of a pale-colored yolk, are in high 

 esteem. If prejudice could be got over, there is no doubt they would 

 form an agreeable as well as a nourishing article of food, as a substitute 

 for other eggs in our domestic economy. 



The shark-fishery is carried on in many parts of the Indian Ocean, 

 and on the eastern coast of Africa, and recently it has been pursued 

 on the coast of Norway. About Kurrachee, in India, as many as 

 40,000 sharks are taken in the year. The back-fins are much es- 

 teemed as a food delicacy in China, from 7,000 to 10,000 of these being 

 shipped to that empire annually from Bombay. In Norway and Ice- 

 land the inhabitants make indiscriminate use of every species capt- 

 ured, hanging up the carcasses for a whole year, like hams, that the 

 flesh.may become mellow. The liver, however, appears to be strictly 

 prohibited everywhere, as a dangerous article of food. 



Mr. N. Brabazon, in his " Fisheries of Ireland," in allusion to the 

 large shoals of sharks which pass annually along the west coast, on 

 their way from the southern to the northern seas, speaks particularly 

 of the basking shark : " These fish are worth from 35 to 50 each ; 

 and when so many as five hundred have been killed in one season, this 

 class of fishing should be well attended to for the short season it lasts, 

 if the weather is favorable to it, especially as it is at a time when other 

 fish are out of season. The fishermen have a superstition that the fish 

 will leave the coast if the bodies of those caught were brought to the 

 shore." Mr. P. L. Simmons, in his " Waste Products and Undevel- 

 oped Substances," gives almost incredible statistics of the vast amount 

 of fish-refuse which is either left to rot on the coasts and putrefy the 

 air, or thrown back into the sea unutilized, both on our own and on 

 foreign shores ; and he significantly points to its value as a manure 

 not far inferior to guano, of which this country alone requires 200,000 

 tons a year, and pays upward of 22,000,000. Would it not, there- 

 fore, be wise for enterprise and capital to begin to turn more at- 

 tention to the manufacture of fish-guano, of which the debris of the 

 North American fisheries, and those of the North Sea, would furnish 

 ample material ? Chambers^ Journal. 



