2l6 



are necessary and available ; salted and dried fish c-m 

 be supplied free from all taint, smoked fish is already in 

 demand and this cure has been undertaken by several 

 private firms and persons ; pickled fish is now under 

 trial, while canning for which experimental plant has 

 been obtained, is a necessity and a certainty of the 

 immediate future. These methods and many other 

 possibilities too numerous to mention, will largely cure 

 the evil of tainted fish supplies, and are already in active, 

 if experimental, progress. But only a beginning has 

 been made, and many years of thought, experiment, and 

 demonstration are }et necessary before untainted food 

 will be supplied from all our fishing and curing 

 centres. 



More food. — This is not so simple a development as 

 may be thought. Moreover there are two branches of 

 the subject ; the first is the turning into food of much of 

 the present catches which is not so utilized ; secondly 

 the catching of more fish. Firstly, along the West 

 Coast and in parts of the East Coast certain fish appear 

 at times in enormous shoals and are cauo-ht in such 

 quantity that, with the appliances and methods now in 

 use, they cannot be treated as food but are dried on the 

 sand and become a rude fertilizer, most of which is 

 exported to foreign countries at low prices. A single 

 recent day's work at one fishing centre produced iio 

 tons of fresh fish, chiefly mackerel ; single hauls of a 

 shore seine frequently exceed several tons of sardine. 

 There is no more wasteful or unprofitable way of treating 

 such fish than drying them for fertilizer on the sand ; as 

 food they would directly maintain their tens of thousands. 

 When these sardine masses are cured as food, the 

 present method is to clean as many as possible, salt, and 

 dry them in the usual way ; these are fairly good, but 

 those which cannot, for lack of time and space, be so 

 dealt with, are strewn on leaf mats in the sun and dried 

 without cleaning or salt, the result of which — cxpcrto 

 credite — is food, but food of which most should be 

 condemned. Again, in parts of the Presidency, scaleless 

 fish or animals are not eaten, so that sharks and dog-fish, 

 skates and rays, porpoises, etc., though caught are not 

 properly utilized as they are on the West Coast ; the 

 flesh of these should be so utilized that less particular 

 folk may be nourished. 



