'17 



wood smoke, containing- creasote, etc., being consider- 

 ably anticeptic ; the critical stage, in fact, is practically 

 passed, at least temporarily, as soon as the fish is fairly 

 in the smoke kiln ; for such smoking, paddy husk and 

 various woods are fairly cheap and abundant, and on the 

 sandy shores casuarina (and other fuel timbers) can be 

 readily grown, as at Mangalore for the pottery kilns and 

 other purposes. The wet process in which the fish is 

 kept continuously in salt in closed barrels until consumed, 

 at once removes the fish from danoer for a time sufficient 

 to permit of transport and leisurely sale : indeed the 

 "tamarind-fish" is said to keep good for many months 

 if not indefinitely. As for canning, which the French 

 manufacturer has begun, danger of putrefaction ceases 

 from the moment the fish are placed in the boiling oil or 

 under steam or in the chloride of calcium bath. The 

 method of reduction of the fish to meal with rapid artifi- 

 cial desiccation and with or without subsequent compres- 

 sion into hard cakes, may be too expensive and elaborate 

 for present adoption, but cod-fish meal is a regular item 

 on the American market and dried fish, powdered and 

 compressed, formed, it is believed, the basis of the 

 Japanese war ration, 



26. Just as the catching process is primitive, insuffici- 



ently effective, restricted in area, 

 Catching and curing a ^j^j slow in communications, so the 



like need modernishing. , • 1 • i 



subsequent curmg process which, 

 in a tropical country of vast distances and in the absence 

 of rapid internal communications refrigeration, and orga- 

 nisation, must supply the inland trade, is primitive, slow, 

 ineffective and undiversified, and it should be modernised 

 and improved by the aid of science, knowledge and 

 capital, if the product is to be thoroughly wholesome 

 and widely marketable. Even in non-tropical countries 

 and regions every effect that can be devised is made to 

 secure rapidity, the culmination perhaps being reached 

 in the cannino- factories of British Columbia where 20 

 minutes suffice to pass salmon from the wharf through 

 the cleaning, cutting up, and tinning rooms to the steam 

 bath. 



27. Among the complaints made by curers are several 



which bear materially on the curing 

 Complaints by curers— of fish. The first is the rule that 



no fish can be brought into the yard 



