from Dr. Hugh M. Smith 



A HJiRRING AUCTION IN GRI]>.ISBY, ENGLAND 



"We in America, where fish forms such a minor part of our daily diet, and where so 

 many of the fish that we eat are grown in our rivers and bays, under a great American- 

 originated system of fish culture, find it hard to realize how serious in their proportions and 

 how far-reaching in their consequences are the results of the practical closing down of the 

 fisheries of the North Sea" (see text, page 142). 



SO the endless chain of outgoing baskets 

 laden to the rim and incoming empties 

 keeps passing until the trawler's load is 

 on the dock. 



One sees the cod laid out in one, two, 

 three, and four dozen lots. Here are the 

 big halibut, with their white bellies turned 

 up, still quivering with the life that has 

 not entirely gone out of them. The 

 smaller species, such as the whiting, 

 plaice, and gurnards, are carefully washed 

 and arranged in Avooden boxes. 



At 8 o'clock the auction begins. A big 

 auctioneer bawls out the name of the fish 

 he is ofifering for sale ; a young laddie, 

 scarcely in his teens, vigorously rings a 

 hand-bell with a mastery that makes its 

 clanging melodious, and the buyers ap- 

 proach. From early morning to late 

 afternoon the sale continues. An army 

 of jostling workmen labor as if their lives 

 depended upon it — scrubbing, washing, 

 packing fish, and loading the numerous 

 trains that soon are hastening to all parts 



of Great Britain with their fishy freight. 

 Sometimes men armed with long, forbid- 

 ding-looking knives run along the dock, 

 plunge their great daggers into each cod, 

 grab out the liver, and hasten on to the 

 next pile as if there were no time but the 

 living moment to finish the job. 



BACK TO the; fishing banks 



After a skipper's catch is sold he re- 

 verses his engines, backs out from the 

 quay, goes to the ice dock, fills the hold 

 of his vessel with ice, its bunkers with 

 coal, and its larder with victuals, and 

 hastens back to the fishing grounds ; for 

 there are too many fish on the banks 

 awaiting his coming to permit of a picnic 

 party ashore. Such functions are in 

 order when the howling winter seas make 

 trawling impossible. 



For it can never be more important 

 for a farmer to make hay while the sun 

 shines than for the North Sea fisherman 

 to keep busy while the sea is calm. The 



147 



