BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 4G3 



salmon exported from British Columbia over 5,G0O barrels of salted 

 saluiou have also been exported, the demand for the fish thus preserved 

 being steadily increasing. Trout of all kinds abound in many Canadian 

 rivers, and the best are the sea-trout and the salmon-trout. Whiteflsh 

 and trout fisheries are carried on on a large scale chiefly in the lakes of 

 Ontario. These lakes are properly called great inland seas, Sui)erior 

 covering an area of 31,000 square miles, and Erie, Huron, and Ontario 

 combined, 5l>,(*0^^ square miles. Many rivers empty their waters into 

 these lakes, and these abound in food-fish, the delicacy and flavor of 

 which are well known ; saliaon- trout, whiteflsh, sturgeon, pickerel, pike, 

 bass, perch, &c., abound in them. The fishermen of the Canadian lakes 

 use gill-nets and trap-nets, and their vessels are either sailing boats of 

 from 20 to 30 feet in length, or small steamers called fishing tugs, one 

 advantage of the latter being the speed with which fish can be conveyed 

 to railway stations to be transi)orted in refrigerators to market. The 

 produce of whitefish, trout, &c., from the lakes in 1882 was 4,500,000 

 pounds, sent fresh to market, besides 5,079 barrels of the same fish 

 salted, 9,753 barrels of trout, aud 41,380 barrels sturgeon, bass, pike, 

 mukallonge, and other fish, making a total of 56,197 barrels, or a total 

 of 15,739,700 pounds as the marketed products of the lake and river 

 fisheries. There are besides these the river fisheries of the maritime 

 provinces, giving an aggregate value for the fresh- water fishes of the 

 Douiinion of $4,000,000. The paper closes with some reference to the 

 general commercial value of the fisheries, it being claimed that " the 

 fisheries are not oidy important to us in consequence of the vast amount 

 of wealth that can be drawn from the deep, apparently without dimin- 

 ishing or exhausting its source, but because by this means a body of 

 able and hardy seam, en maybe found to conduct the commerce of a 

 maritime country during peace and to become its gallant defenders on 

 the ocean in time of war." 



2aO.— ON TME ABUIVDAIVCE OF HA1.IBUT NEAR ICELAiVlJ. 



By Capt. J. \V. COLLII^S. 



While in England, in the summer of 1880, after leaving the Berlin 

 Fishery Exhibition, I was told by English fishermen, sailing from 

 Grimsby, that they had often found halibut in extraordinary abundance 

 while fishing for cod at Iceland. I was much interested in these state- 

 ments, first because Capt. John S. McQuinu, of Gloucester, went to 

 Iceland in the schooner Mambriuo Chief, m 1873, on a "salt halibut" 

 trip, and failed to get a fare — a result which until now has prevented 

 other Gloucester fishermen from visiting that locality ; and second, 

 because I knew that, if halibut are as abundant in the waters around 

 Iceland as they were represented to be by the Grimsby fishermen, Amer- 



