48 BRITISH FISH AND FISHERIES. 



great. Sir John Barrow, in an article on 

 Fisheries, in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica, estimates their total value, including 

 foreign and domestic, at 8,300,000 a year. 

 This amount is regarded by Mr. M'Cullcch as 

 an exaggeration, and he is of decided opinion 

 that the entire value of the fisheries is within 

 3,000,000, or 3,500,000 per year ; still an 

 enormous and startling sum, sufficient to justify 

 our previous observations.* 



It is not easy to speculate on the influence 

 which railroads, traversing the kingdom in all 

 directions, will ultimately have upon the 

 fisheries. It may be presumed that the means 

 of rapid communication thus opened with the 

 central counties will tend to the increase in those 

 districts of the consumption of fish, where little 

 in a fresh state had been previously made use 

 of. In many instances, our central towns will, 

 perhaps, be abundantly supplied directly from 

 the coast ; and at all events, orders for fish, 

 given by the resident country gentry to London 



* Looking at Cornwall alone, the fisheries situate on the 

 south coast, principally at Looe, Polperro, Megavissey, Port 

 Looe, Falmouth, and Mount's Bay, and on the north coast of 

 St. Ives, produce, upon an average, 21,000 hogsheads of 

 pilchards annually, and sometimes nearly double this number, 

 and generally 2,000 tons of mackerel. The pilchards are 

 cured largely for exportation, Italy being the principal 

 market. There is also a great home consumption of this 

 fish in Cornwall and Devonshire. 



