200 DEEP-SEA FISHINCx. 



ten or fourteen days. Tlie fish is taken ont loose and 

 all sold by weight ; pads, pots, and trunks are here 

 unknown, and the buyer finds the packages, those now 

 regularly used being small barrels holding about ten or 

 twelve stone of fish, and called " kits." In these the 

 fish is packed, with a sprinkling of crushed ice^ between 

 each layer, and an extra quantity at the top, which is 

 covered with straw and tied down. In this state the 

 fish is sent all over the country to the fishmongers, so 

 that from the time it is caught till it comes into the 

 hands of the consumer it is kept in ice. Our ideas of 

 fresh fish, however, will not be quite the same now as 

 they were twenty years ago ; a great deal of what 

 comes to our tables has been caught for a week or two, 

 perhaps longer, before we see it ; and yet is in a more 

 wholesome condition than much that was frequently 

 called fresh fish in former times. This is doubtless 

 owing to the fish having been put into the ice only a 

 few minutes after it was caught — we might almost 

 say whilst it was alive ; for the first thing done on 

 board a trawler when the net has been got in and 

 emptied, is tlie sorting and putting away such kinds 

 of fish as are marketable. The quantity of ice now 

 imported into Hull is fixmi 16,000 to 20,000 tons 

 annually ; and a still larger quantity is landed at 

 (irrimsby, as before noticed. 



How mucli is used at the other large stations we 

 have no means of ascertaining ; but the quantity 

 must be very large, and — to borrow a term from 

 the geologists — tlie present may well be called the 

 " Griacial Period " of the fisheries. Ice lias, in fact, 

 revolutionized the trade, and at the same time has l^een 



' Almost every wholesale buyer has a large hand-mill by whieh he crushes 

 the block ice into small pieces about the size of a marble. 



