77 



Inspectors, in developing such an accessory to employment 

 and contentment in Ireland as well as additional national 

 supply ? Perhaps our good friend Professor Brown Goode 

 will tell us what 2337 miles of coast teeming with fish would 

 mean, in a value sense, to the people who breed shad and 

 raise carp remuneratively in mud baths. I have no time 

 even to hint at the aggregate amount of loss when we add 

 mackerel, cod, and all the edible fish, besides herring, in the 

 length of coast stated. I will but touch on the mackerel, as 

 I have little time to emphasise what we have learned in 

 the herring report. In the captures at all the stations, 

 amounting to 199,779 boxes, 1 28,473 value, the little 

 fishery pier of Baltimore springs into a prosperous station 

 in a remarkable manner, rising in two years from 9845 

 boxes to 56,643, making, with the established fishing 

 harbour of Kinsale, the amount of 177,000 out of an Irish 

 total of 199,779, leaving but 22,779 boxes for all the rest of 

 Ireland close on 3000 miles ! The fish were there when 

 the 9000 boxes represented the whole take in 1880. 



How is this ? Simply a pier was built, costing 4000, by 

 Government, and the people (who could not fish before, and 

 so had no money to start) found a patron, who advanced 

 the necessary funds, and see the result. The Report also 

 shows that turbot, soles, mackerel, cod, haddock, herring, 

 whiting, sprats, lobsters, crabs and divers coarse fish abound 

 in every division ; and it will be remembered that the old 

 theory hitherto commonly obtaining, that the shoals of 

 herring and mackerel passed along the whole coast, has been 

 rudely shattered at these Conferences, so that the utiliza- 

 tion of new fishing ground does not only give an extra 

 catch to the human congener of the herring-loving cod, 

 but, encountering a new supply, is like the discovery of 

 an original source of national wealth and sustenance ; and 



