THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND-LABOOR. 57 
number of Irish boats fishing for mackerel was only 133, 
showing an increase in the fleet in seven years equal to about 
a hundred per cent., which is very gratifying, and proves 
that the Irish fishermen are prompt to seize upon an obvious 
advantage. The mackerel fishery gives employment to 
many other persons besides those who capture the fish. At 
the chief ports, Kinsale and Baltimore, vessels are employed 
in bringing ice: then there are the carrying steamers, each | 
with a fair crew on board, whilst considerable employment 
is given to residents in the respective localities both in 
packing the fish and in other ways. 
It is expected that the Irish fishermen will in time grow 
a pilchard fishery. Large shoals of these fish are known 
to be in the Irish seas, and a beginning of fishery enter- 
prise in that line has already taken place, fifty-four hogs- 
heads of Pilchards having been cured in the’Cornish fashion 
(1882), at Baltimore, which were sold in Genoa, and realised 
at the rate of £4 14s. per hogshead. As the inspectors of 
the Irish fisheries say, there is abundance of room for 
this enterprise being largely developed off the county of 
Cork, and the foregoing should be an encouragement to 
others to embark in it ; if judiciously managed by persons 
who understand the best methods of capturing and curing, 
it ought to prove most remunerative. 
No statistics of a reliable kind are published as to the 
number of boats and men engaged in the round and flat 
fish fisheries of Ireland, but testimony has been frequently 
borne as to the abundance of many kinds of valuable food 
fishes in the waters surrounding the Emerald Isle, and of 
the field of industry thus presented tothe Irish fisher folk. 
But although the finest turbot and holibut are to be had 
for the mere exertion of capture, the Irish fisher folk are 
not possessed, in most instances, of the necessary fishing 
