42 THE FISHERIES OF THE ADRIATIC, 



engaged in its exercise, but for the highest State reasons, as it is the best 

 school for training seamen, — a fact which nowadays is generally recognised. 1 



Hitherto, the poverty of the inhabitants, and the want of markets other 

 than their own, where they could dispose of the superfluous produce of the 

 fisheries, were the chief causes which acted in unison to damp all enterprise, 

 and to restrict it to the most immediate wants of the communities themselves, 

 and thus check a regular development. 



But, by degrees, other markets are being opened up by the construction 

 of railways, and, instead of the complaints formerly heard as to the want of 

 sale, we now hear complaints of shortness of supply, and dearness of the 

 prices. This is natural and easily explained. The same change has occurred 

 in England, only in a much more acute form; the railways have brought about 

 an entire revolution in the trade, which is now concentrated in the metropolis, 

 and to such an extent that seaport towns draw their supply thence. This is 

 by no means the case here ; the railways have enlarged the market to some 

 inland towns, it is true, but only, as yet, to a very limited extent. Yet the 

 difference is such that hitherto the fishermen were dependent on the local 

 demand; whereas, now, the consumer is mainly dependent upon the fisherman, 

 and the difference is felt. 



The increase of the demand and the opening-up of new markets should 

 lead, by a very natural inference, to a proportionate increase in the enterprise 

 of the fishermen. But this is only the case in a much less degree than it 

 could be thought possible ; the people require goading on to enterprise, and 

 there is an entire want of that free impulse to which one is accustomed in 

 England, which works on ahead, regardless of all obstacles instead of only 



1 Thus for instance, by France, under Napoleon III., and by Germany since 1870, who have 

 done everything in their power to foster and encourage their national fisheries. This was par- 

 ticularly the case in Germany, whose fisheries had, since 1847, been on the decrease. The 

 " Deutsche Fischerei Verein," several establishments of pisciculture, foremost amongst which the 

 I. Centralanstalt zu Hiinnigen have since been founded, besides a joint-stock company for 

 Herring-fisheries started at Emden in 1872, with six boats, realising 87,000 florins gross profits on 

 a capital of 105,000 florins. The exhibition of fisheries at Berlin is another instance of the 

 importance attached to her fisheries by Germany. 



