Sixth Annual Meeting. 89 



exactly to himself, but deems them applicable entirely to some 

 one else. Advance this idea of waste more particularly in 

 regard to fish, and the generality of people will say : " Oh ! of 

 course it is quite true. That is to say, we have not the least 

 doubt but that it may really happen some day or other, this 

 want you speak about, but what business is it of ours? When 

 the trouble comes this man is talking about we shall not be 

 here, you know. It will regard the men who are to live and eat 

 some fifty or a hundred years after us. That is their look-out, 

 you see, and not ours." 



What struck me then most particularly at the Centennial Ex- 

 hibition — something which pervaded me all the time, which was 

 always the most prominent — was this idea of American waste. 

 I mean the immense quantity of good fish, intended by the 

 Almighty for food, which was despised and thrown away by us 

 in this country. I must confess that my own studies have been 

 for the last few years more particularly directed towards the 

 preparation of fish as food, and at the Centennial an opportunity 

 was allowed me of comparing the preparations of our own coun- 

 try with those of other sections of the world. One thing which 

 was apparent was the meagre list of our own fish preparations. 

 Mind you, I do not mean as to quantity. When we think that 

 the Columbia River alone furnishes fully three times more 

 canned salmon than the whole catch of salmon in England, Scot- 

 land, Ireland, or Wales, we can say nothing as to quantity. But 

 quantity is not always quality. What I took the libertv of 

 suggesting, in a brief paper read by me in Philadelphia some 

 months ago, I have to repeat now, and that is that in our fish 

 preparations we are monotonous. When we have said cod, 

 mackerel, herrings, shad, salmon, and whitefish, we have entirely 

 exhausted our list of fish preparations. We seem from custom 

 or habit to be pent up within certain limits. Now I do not 



