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can continue work on dried fish when fresh fish is not 

 available. The plant required is nothing but one or 

 more open boiling pans, one or more wooden presses, a 

 filter, and a supply of tubs ; with this chief plant can be 

 turned out oil and fertilizer of good quality, which could 

 then be sold to brokers who would blend the products 

 and place them with a guarantee of quality or analysis 

 on the markets ; the oil for various purposes such as the 

 batching of jute, the fertilizer to the hungry fields of 

 India. These petty factories can either be started singly 

 as individual ventures, or in groups by the help and 

 under the control of small firms or capitalists who will 

 obtain their profits as the brokers or middlemen. This 

 method was advocated in public papers about \\ years 

 ago ; up to date one enterprising Indian merchant has 

 adopted it as a personal venture, and has now three 

 screw presses and boilers ; developments, in the way of 

 promoting a number of such petty works, are under 

 discussion by others. A similar plant intended to 

 demonstrate improvements in the saving of labour, 

 rapidity, the quality of the oil and guano, the preser- 

 vation of the fresh fish from taint pending operations, 

 etc., has been started by the Government Experimental 

 Station, and good results are expected.* There is a 

 wide opening for proper dealing with such fish as, at 

 present, cannot be turned into food ; the final object 

 however should be to increase the food supply at the 

 expense of the yield in fertilizer, for the direct nourish- 

 ment of the people by the consumption of the fish itself 

 is a more economical use of fish than its transformation 

 into fertilizer, which, indeed, should mainly reach the 

 soil indirectly after doing its work as food. 



But there is a wholly untouched, unobjectionable, and 

 permanent supply of fish manure in "fish waste"; the 

 "utilisation of waste " is one of the reforms which India 

 has to learn from Japan ; that which at present is a 

 sanitary nuisance, whether night soil or fish waste, may 

 become a vast source of wealth. Fish waste consists of 

 the offal or guts of the masses of fish brought to shore ; 

 of quantities of fish too putrid for use as food ; of fish- 

 bones, heads, and other residues ; all these are now badly 

 wasted, only a small portion of the offal being used as 



* By 1914 211 small private factories, extending in a chain along the coasts 

 of Malabar and South Canara, were in active operation. 



