FISH AND FISHERIES. 145 



described, and the hooks being baited, the lines are neatly coiled in 

 half-bushel baskets, clear for running out. The baskets are placed in 

 two strong-built lugsail boats, and at 3 o'clock in the afternoon both 

 make sail together at right angles from the vessel on opposite sides. 

 When the lines are run out straight, they are sunk to within 2 feet of 

 the bottom. At daybreak next morning the boats proceed to trip the 

 sinkers at the extremites of the lines, and while the crew of each boat 

 are hauling in line and unhooking fish the men on board heave in the 

 other end of the lines with a winch. In this way 400 of the larger 

 bank cod are commonly taken in a night. The fish are cleaned and 

 salted on board, and stowed in the hold in bulk ; the livers to be boiled 

 for oil are put in large casks, secured on deck." We may observe that 

 the French method mentioned above of treating the cod livers is not to 

 be recommended, the extremely disagreeable smell of cod-liver oil being 

 due entirely to the putrefied condition of the livers. To have a per- 

 fectly sweet and pure oil, it should be obtained by the moderate appli- 

 cation of heat when in an undecomposed state. 



The " harbour and net" fisheries, like those of deeper water, cannot 

 be made productive to a much greater extent than at present, without 

 increased facilities for bringing the fish fresh to market, and there is no 

 more effective way of accomplishing that end than by the use of ice ; and 

 indeed that is the only suggestion we can make for the improvement 

 and development of these harbour fisheries. The boats in use among 

 these net fishermen are good and well adapted for the purposes they 

 serve ; the seine nets they use are undoubtedly unexcelled in securing 

 any fish there may be within their circumference, and the means of 

 getting their fish to market seems to be the only trouble to which the 

 rather lazy net fishermen are subject. Ice and rapid communication are 

 the only effectual remedies for this ; but these will be quickly availed 

 of as soon as sufficient inducements offer in the shape of immediate 

 money profits. 



The trawl net, the chief instrument of capture on the English 

 coast, has never come into general use here, and it is probable never 

 may to any great extent, owing to the rocky character of our coast. 

 If, however, a detailed survey of our fishing-grounds should prove the 

 existence of some sandbanks, the trawl net would be found to be the 

 most useful and almost only mode of getting at such fish as the flounder, 

 sole, and John Dory. 



The " special fisheries" are those which like the salmon, the herring, 

 the pilchard, the anchovy, the tunny, the mackerel, and other fishes of 

 similar habit, appear at certain periods for a short time only, and there- 

 fore if they are fished for at all must be fished for and utilized in a very 

 different way from the every-day fishes. They differ from the other 

 fisheries also, in so far as the fishes of the special class have a value 

 chiefly arising from some particular mode of preparing them for the 

 local market or exportation — the numbers in which they are generally 

 taken far exceeding the possible demand for them in a fresh state. 



The sea mullet [Mugil grandis) is, of all our fishes, the one that gives 

 gi'eatest inducements for a special fishery. In the months of April and 

 May it makes its appearance in very large shoals on our coast, never 

 going far from land, always proceeding in a northerly direction, and 



