PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION 13 



which represents more than .10,000,000. Each fisher- 

 man is responsible for nearly ten tons of fish a year, 

 representing a value of ^105, and his profits amount 

 nearly to 61. These are excellent results, but they will 

 soon be surpassed. 



Excellent at sea, the English system is still more 

 admirable on shore. The United Kingdom is equipped 

 with great fishery ports, capacious harbours, whose only 

 object and function is fishery. These ports are well 

 situated and splendidly equipped, and are connected up 

 with the rest of the country by means of numerous rail- 

 ways. The various operations are easily and rapidly 

 effected. At Grimsby enormous shipments of fish 

 amounting to a thousand tons and more are unloaded 

 from a hundred trawlers as they lie moored in the Fish 

 Dock, are sold by auction, loaded in three or four 

 hundred trucks or vans, and despatched in all directions, 

 all in the course of a few hours. In France the muni- 

 cipal octroi duties are imposed upon fish as though it 

 were a luxury which could well afford to pay. Fish is 

 loaded with taxes ; but in England this valuable form of 

 food finds the gates of every city open to it, or, rather, 

 there are no gates. The English have long understood 

 that the men of the seaboard are not foreigners, but of 

 the same nation as the men of the cities, the mines, and 

 the fields. 



Not far from the market sheds are the ice factories and 

 the warehouses of the fish merchants and the fish-curers, 

 and the factories where fish meal or fish manure or fish 

 glue is made or fish-oil prepared ; beyond these are the 

 repairing shops, the ship-chandlers', the sailmakers', and 

 ropemakers' warehouses. The life of these ports is active 

 and concentrated. It is disciplined and orderly, thanks 

 to the goodwill of all, and is supervised by a local 



