302 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



Bay territories, in the elevated regions of Thibet, and in Arctic winter climates 

 generally. The frozen-meat ships, for a forty-five days' passage from Loudon to New 

 Zealand, keep fish frozen for their passengers' food, though usually omitting to have 

 such fish previously bled and gutted. For years the Hudson Bay Company shipped 

 frozen salmon (though unbled and ungutted) to London, Australia, New Zealand, etc., 

 but now the Canadians find that it pays them better to deal with the United States. 

 Frozen salmon brought from Labrador in the screw steamer Diana kept good for 200 

 days, whilst in the Canadian Court of the 1883 London Fisheries Exhibition, frozen 

 salmon after eighteen months of such treatment was found to be excellent eating. 

 A frozen-fish trade is carried on between Senegambia, in West Africa, and Marseilles. 



By means of a mixture of ice aud salt a large, remunerative trade in hard-frozen 

 fresh fish has long been successfully conducted in the United States, where refrigerator 

 steamers fetch fresh fish from the fishing-grounds, freeze it hard, store it as long as 

 required in specially constructed insulated refrigerator wharves and warehouses, and, 

 when necessary, deliver it frozen in specially constructed fish refrigerator railway 

 cars to inland distant districts unprovided with canals, rivers, or lakes. However 

 this salt and ice process is much dearer than the dry-cold-air methods. 



By the introduction of frozen fish, both the fishermen and the fish-venders them- 

 selves will be great gainers, as with an extended commerce they will cease to deal in 

 a perishable product, and also no longer require to waste their money on ice. In time 

 every large town or district will require its own refrigerator stores or depots where 

 both frozen fish and meat could be preserved to supply the local traders, who would 

 thus never have to suffer pecuniary loss from overstocking with perishable food. 



Excluding the wholesale fresh salmon trade, almost a monopoly, I estimate that, 

 including all freights, costs, and charges, the wholesale selling price of fresh fish in 

 the markets of the United Kingdom now (1889) already exceeds £15,500,000 a year. 

 But by judiciously pushing and developing the dry-air frozen fresh-fish trades this 

 wholesale commerce for home and export consumption could in a few years be made 

 to exceed £100,000,000 a year. It would be a national disaster if foreign competition 

 were to secure such a trade, which, in addition to its financial aspect, includes the 

 best school in which to train sailors for our navy, a fact long recognized by the Dutch 

 and French. 



The poor are naturally puzzled, perplexed, and frightened at the present ever 

 varying and fluctuating prices of the same kind of fish under the existing wasteful 

 fish-destroying systems; this is another reason why they will welcome the advent of 

 frozen fish. The total supply of frozen fish will be quite independent of local fogs, 

 storms, calms, and the catch of the preceding twenty-four hours. Frozen fish should 

 therefore remain all through the year at constant prices. 



THE APPLICATION OF REFRIGERATION TO BAIT PRESERVATION. 



The scarcity and high price of bait at times can doubtless be largely overcome 

 through the use of refrigerators on vessels and on shore. Whether fish and other 

 aquatic animals are to be eaten by man or preserved as bait with which to catch fish, 

 the methods of preserving such animal tissue must be scientifically and industrially 

 the same. Hence, upon the lines I have already explained, dry-air refrigeration is the 

 only rational, reasonable, and economical plan to preserve fish baits. Therefore, except 

 dry cold air, all chemical or other antiseptics, as used iu the diluted proportions practi- 



