THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 47 



publishing, of the value of these fisheries. It is stated in 

 the last edition of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " that 2000 

 gallons of shrimps a day are sent away occasionally from 

 Leigh in Essex. Assuming that the whole annual catch is 

 only fifty times the catch of a single day, 100,000 gallons of 

 shrimps must be taken at Leigh alone. Their value, at I s. a 

 gallon, would be 5,000 a year. But Leigh is not the only 

 or the chief home of the fishery. Wherever a sandy shore 

 fringes the coast shrimpers are at work, and their gross take 

 must be very large. If it be only twenty times the take at 

 Leigh, it must amount to 100,000 annually. Perhaps it will 

 surprise still more persons to learn that the cockles which 

 are gathered in Morecambe Bay are sold for at least 

 20,000 a year,* and that more than 2,500 tons of peri- 

 winkles are annually consumed in London. Yet More- 

 cambe Bay is not the only place in which cockles yield a 

 fertile harvest to the neighbourhood, and London is not the 

 only large town where people buy periwinkles by the ton 

 load. Shrimps, cockles, and periwinkles form, however, 

 only a small portion of the trade in shell fish. The more 

 important portions of this trade are the trade in mussels, 

 the trade in lobsters and crabs, and the trade in oysters. 



More than thirty years ago, according to a return which 

 was published by the Deep Sea Fishery Commissioners of 

 i866,f 498,000,000 oysters, or, in round numbers, 500,000,000 

 oysters were sold in London. Placing them at only a 

 halfpenny apiece, and omitting the large quantities sold on 

 the coast and other places, the value of the oysters sold 

 must have exceeded 1,000,000. There is reason for 

 fearing that the continual decrease of oysters during the 

 last quarter of a century must have diminished these sales. 

 But, if the number has decreased, the price has increased ; 

 * See " Fisheries Comm.," 1879, P- 2 38 t p - 457* 



