30 



My book on the " Preservation and Cure of Fish " 

 (G.O. Mis. No, 351, Revenue, dated loth February 

 1909) met with some approval, so that the edition was 

 exhausted during the year and a further one, embodying 

 the resuhs of Madras experience, is called for. 



A large amount of energy, time, and some material 

 has been spent on experiment, much of which was only 

 useful as showing what not to do ; it requires much 

 patience, time, and some money to work out to success 

 experiments which often cannot be immediately repeated 

 or which last only for a brief season, and which are not 

 only wholly novel to the country but have to be carried 

 out by inexperienced hands and under conditions 

 absolutely different from those of the countries where 

 they originally developed ; the results, moreover, though 

 often successful, may be found to be unacceptable to the 

 existing markets. In a recent American Fishery 

 Bulletin it is remarked that " the most valuable branch 

 " of the American herring industry is the canning of 

 "small herrinsf under the name of sardines. The busi- 

 " ness began in 1875, pi-e ceded by six or seven years of 

 " experimental worki" etc. So in the middle of the 19th 

 century it took the French Government twelve years of 

 experimental work at Arcachon merely to revive and 

 to place on a new footing the ancient but decadent 

 oyster industry. I need hardly say that if in the energetic, 

 businesslike States and in the temperate climate of 

 Maine, a single branch of fishery work, and that a more 

 or less mechanical and well-known one, had to be 

 preceded by " six or seven years of experiment," we can 

 hardly expect to be more fortunate, more skilful in 

 attempting to develop in ways suited to this tropical 

 climate and amongst and with these tropical people a 

 whole series of fishery operations and products developed 

 amidst other conditions and other folk, beginning with 

 the fishing net and ending only with the consumer. 



