422 ON THE PLACE OF FISH IN 



Secondly, fish is not proposed as a sole article of 

 food, only an addition to, or improvement on, what 

 they now have. 



Thirdly, the objection may be removed by the 

 mode of cooking it. In America cod and other kinds 

 of fish are dressed with pork, bacon, fat beef, potatoes, 

 thickened with rice or oatmeal, and small suet 

 dumplings, and seasoned with savory herbs, and 

 pepper and salt, the whole producing a palatable and 

 nutritious stew which they call choudep. 



The benefits to accrue from a more general use of 

 fish are food, occupation, nursery for seamen, and 

 increase of trade. 



Norway derives five-sixths of its food from fisheries, 

 without which its population could not exist. It is 

 not desired, nor may it be expedient or necessary, to 

 carry the use of fish to even a third of that 

 comparative amount. But if one-fourth only of the 

 subsistence of this country were derived from fish 

 (the other three parts being chiefly composed of 

 corn, meat, and potatoes and an equal quantity were 

 exported in exchange for the wheat, rice and other 

 foreign produce), it would not only provide for an 

 additional population of above four million, but would 

 supply the whole of the inhabitants of Great Britain 

 with more nutritive and palatable diet than they now 

 enjoy, as the saving of butchers' meat by the middle 

 classes might allow a greater proportion of it for the 

 poor, instead of their present scanty and too general 

 diet of bread, water and tea. 



Fisheries would afford employment to a numerous 



