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been acquired. Fallacies, too, respecting the Salmonidae and their 

 habits had been exploded ; in fact, looking to the advantages 

 derived by science, as many fallacies had been exploded as new facts 

 acquired. 



There was one matter relating to fish to which he hoped the 

 Directors of the Brighton Aquarium would direct their serious 

 attention, viz., popularizing, as articles of food, sundry fish which 

 seldom found their way to table, because, from some unknown cause, 

 or false prejudice, they were tabooed. There was the pilchard, 

 seldom found in Brighton or London markets, except at times 

 under the name of so-called herrings, and yet Cornwall sent millions 

 of them to the markets of southern Europe ; the ray family and 

 the dog fishes, which were not generally known as articles of food, 

 might have their name and fame spread abroad and prove to be 

 worthy of finding their way to the dinner table, if experiments, 

 such as one of which he had very pleasant recollections, were tried 

 and shown to be successful. He alluded to that famous fish dinner 

 at the Aquarium, in January of that year, when the hitherto tabooed 

 fish, the conger, was served up in sixteen different ways, and 

 pronounced by those who knew its merits, and by those who, up to 

 that time, knew them not— a fine fish. If they could help them to 

 obtain good supplies, and cheap ones, of fish, as articles of food, they 

 would become national benefactors. 



There was a fine field open to them, and if they failed of 

 success, yet they would secnre the next best thing, the credit of 

 having tried to obtain it. 



He might incidentally allude to the very absurd stories which 

 had been circulated by some, from what motives he did not trouble 

 himself to enquire, respecting the unhealthiness and mortality of 

 the fish in the Brighton Aquarium, as compared with those in the 

 Crystal Palace Aquarium. He had no intention of drawing 

 invidious comparisons, nor of attempting to prop up one institution 

 by decrying another. He held that each should stand or fall on its 

 own merits ; but this, as he should show, he could fearlessly assert, 

 that it would be difficult to point out any place, where the fish were 

 more healthy, and the mortality was less, than in the tanks of the 

 Brighton Aquarium. 



