Introduction. 



xxxv 



1852 with a collection of Irish Arts and Manufactures, and in the following 

 year New York, New Brunswick, and Madras gave illustration of their native 

 productions. Munich and Madrid, Christiania and Brussels, Berne, Sardinia, 

 Hanover and St. Petersburg, promptly took up the cue thus given. Within 

 the last thirty years scarcely any land has been without the advantages 

 derived from a public display illustrative of national life. There have been 

 Exhibitions from Thurso to Ballarat, and from Paris to Nagasaki. There have 

 been Exhibitions of particular industries, Exhibitions of Arts, Exhibitions of 

 Treasures, Exhibitions of the Apparatus of Labour, Exhibitions of the Ap- 

 paratus of Science, Exhibitions of Corn, of Wine, and of Needlework. The 

 Dairies of Europe have vied with each other at Hamburg ; Casques and 

 Bronzes have met in assembly at Kioto ; even the Bees have had their own 

 Exhibition in London, and the very Fungi have held a Congress all to them- 

 selves at Aberdeen. 



At last, fourteen years from the commencement of this magnificent series 

 of industrial, art, and scientific triumphs, Fishing and Fisheries asserted 

 their claim to a special display. Boulogne, with its semi-aquatic inhabitants 

 and its frequent memorials of those who have perished in the waters, was the 

 first to open its doors, though both Arcachon and Havre followed its example 

 at a subsequent period. Especial prominence must be given to the important 

 Maritime Exposition held at the former of these two last-mentioned towns ; 

 an enterprise which resulted as we trust will be one of the results of our 

 own Exhibition in a great development and improvement of pisciculture. 

 The Hague also was the scene of a similar collection in 1867, as was Naples 

 in 1871. But the International Fisheries Exhibition held at Berlin in 1880 

 eclipsed all others in extent and variety. Nine great divisions were not more 

 than sufficient for the multiplicity of the ol ' 3cts collected, which ranged from 

 the specimens of corals and oysters, and from dried, salted, and smoked pre- 

 parations, to documents and emblems, and seals, and all the multifarious 

 statistics bearing upon the history of the fishing ndustry. 



It would be foreign to our purpose to dwell upon the particular specimens 

 exhibited at Berlin, yet one class of objects was of so striking a character as 

 to give an excellent example of the incidental illustrations of nature which 

 are, as it were, the perquisites and rewards of those who endure the labours of 

 such multifarious tasks as are involved in the establishment of an International 

 Exhibition. The magnificent collection of sea- fowl was in itself found worthy 

 of prolonged attention. There were the Falconidse, the Fagins of aquatic 

 fowl, who get their prey through the medium of less subtle but more active 

 birds ; the PandionidaB, haunters of salt and fresh water alike, but lovers in 

 particular of the rocky islands in the Tuscan sea ; the ArdeidoB (the herons), 

 to which the Egretta Alba of Venice belongs; the Phoenicopteridse (tlie 

 flamingoes), which pass in flights year by year over the Sardinian chores; the 

 Procellaridse (the petrels), including that unique bird the Oceanides Wilsoni, 

 whereof a single specimen alone in the world is preserved in the Museum of 

 Cagliari; and with them were many other different kinds of fowl which 

 follow the human fashion of feeding upon the inhabitants of the waters. 

 From Germany this admirable and most politic conception parsed over into 



