CURING. 15 



clean water, and placed in piles in kenches. The loss of weight from 

 salting for the heavily salted fish is about 40 per cent of the dressed 

 weight or 17 per cent of the live weight, and this loss occurs whether 

 the fish is partly salted on the vessel and completed in the butts or 

 the entire salting is done in the butts on fresh fish. 



As before stated, the fish will keep indefinitely in the strong brine 

 of the pickle so long as they are covered. The pickle must be added 

 to occasionally to make up the losses, particularly from leakage. 

 Very rarely a butt will sour because of some oversight in passing fish 

 which had previously been tainted or improperly salted. Reddening 

 will occur if any part of the fish projects above the brine or the brine 

 is allowed to fall below the level of the fish. The losses in the butt, 

 lowever, are small, and it is customary to keep the fish in that way 

 until they are wanted. 



WATEBHOKSING. 



When the fish are taken out of the butts they are piled in a kench 

 to drain off part of the brine. The fish are stacked face down, with 

 ;he exception of the lowest layer in contact with the rack, in kenches 

 usually about 4 feet high. If there is urgent demand for them, they 

 are left in this condition for twenty-four or forty-eight hours. If 

 more time can be allowed, they are repiled at the end of the first or 

 second day, so that the fish on top may go to the bottom and be sub- 

 jected to pressure to squeeze out part of the water. If the weather is 

 unfavorable to drying, the kench is repiled every second or third da}', 

 i iid this may be continued for ten days or more. With full-pickle fish 

 it is not necessary to kench or waterhorse so thoroughly as in the case 

 of the slack-salted or hard-dried fish. 



When slack-salted fish are taken from the butt they are washed 

 by running water over them and kenching them, as is done for the 

 regular pickled fish, but they are always repiled every other day 

 until they are fairly dry and ready to be exposed to the air. The 

 hard-dried or export fish are taken directly from the kenches in the 

 vessel, and washed, kenched, and rekenched until quite dry, the treat- 

 ment being the same as for the slack-salted product. 



DRYING. 



The fish are dried on flakes and the drying yard is known as the 

 flake yard. The flake consists of a lattice bed about 8 feet wide, 30 

 inches high, and as long as the requirements may demand. The 

 lattice used on this bed is made of triangular strips 1 inch on the 

 base, and these are placed about 3 inches apart. The fish therefore 

 rest upon a sharp edge about every 4 inches. This is for the purpose 

 of giving the maximum circulation of air about the fish. One double- 

 deck flake yard was seen, the space between decks being 18 inches. 



