23 



240° F. The chief products are sardines in oil, boiled sardines, and 

 sardines salted in barrels ; the station was the first to can the fish in 

 oil. Tlie metliods will be fully discribed hereafter ; briefly, for 

 sardines in oil the fisli are beheaded with scissors, partly split and 

 gutted, washed and placed in strong brine for twenty minutes ; 

 placed in wire baskets to drain and then dried in the open air for an 

 hour or two; then suspended for a few minutes in boiling oil con 

 tained in pans over furnaces or in steam heated troughs ; next they 

 are packed in boxes with a given measure of oil and left to soak all 

 night; in the morning the}' are examined soldered up and "pro- 

 cessed " in the cookers at about 6 lbs. pressure, slightly below 240° F. 

 The tins are put into a hot closet kept at about blood heat and left for 

 several days to test the soundness of the process, since unsound cans 

 will by then be bulged with gas. Boiled sardines are large fat fish ; 

 these, treated at first like the others, are not dipped in boiling oil after 

 the brine bath nor are the tins filled with oil, but are closed, boiled, 

 pin. holed and reclosed, and then processed ; the fat suflSces for them 

 and is found as a cake on the surface when opened. For drying the 

 fish in wet weather, there is a good drier or warm closet kept at about 

 75° F. through which air, warmed by passing around steam pipes, is 

 driven by a fan ; the object is not to desiccate but to dry, though, as 

 will be hereafter shown, similar but more powerful driers are used 

 elsewhere for actual desiccation and may be useful in Madras, since 

 plenty of warm dry air is far better for drying fish for preserving 

 purposes than a torrid roasting sun which toasts the outside to a hard 

 crust and leaves the inside a moist and incubative nidus for prolific 

 bacteria. For other matters of interest seen at this station see *' fixed 

 trap nets," "live chests," " boats," etc. 



41. The practical benefits arising from this station have been 

 partly shown above in the matter of boat building and the training of 

 fishermen, but a main benefit is from the canning experiments. 

 Canning in oil first shown here, is now common in Japan, and con- 

 siderable local manufacture is the direct result of the example and 

 teaching of the station. On the mainland at the port opposite the 

 station is an excellent private canning factory started on the model 

 of the station factory ; this and others are run by a company in Nagoya, 

 the district capital, and can turn out 2,000,OOU tins per annum ; the 

 business manager of the company is the late principal of the Experi- 

 mental Station who was originally trained at the Imperial Fisheries 

 Institute, became the canning expert at the station and has now 

 transferred his services to the company. Hence, the building of sea- 

 going boats, the training of fishermen in the handling of them and of 

 the nets which have become available by their use, the consequent 

 ability to go many hundreds of miles (to Korea, etc.) and fish in 

 heavily stocked unexhausted waters for valuable animals such as 



