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THE TRUE SARDINE. 



wire-work to dry and improve their colour. Finally, for 

 a brief period they are placed in a pan of boiling oil. 



" Out of the frying-pan" is not "into the fire," how- 

 ever, in the case of the fictitious sardines. They are de- 

 posited on a grating to leb the oil drain off, and then 

 packed up in the trim little tin cases which form so 

 agreeable an ornament of the breakfast-table. 



The bait chiefly used for catching sprats is cod and 

 mackerel roe ; and the French fishermen, it is said, spend 

 80,000 a year in the purchase of this kind of bait. Fully 

 thirteen thousand boats are employed on the coast of 

 Brittany in the sardine trade. 



THE SARDINE. 



The true SARDINE (Clupea sardina) is a fish of the same 

 genus as the herring and the pilchard, but is smaller than 

 either. It abounds in the Mediterranean ; and sardines 

 preserved in oil, after the fashion already described, are 

 exported in large quantities from some of the French and 

 Italian ports. Like its congeners, it moves towards the 



