34 THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 



Red herrings are fish which after being kept in the salt 

 pickle from two to fourteen days, are washed, dried, hung 

 up in the smoking-house on spits, and smoked with oak or 

 ash smoke for ten or fourteen days more. Kippered 

 herrings, after being salted, are cut open and slightly 

 smoked ; while bloaters are the best fish that can be 

 procured, smoked for a much shorter period. Red 

 herrings are usually packed in barrels or boxes, and 

 are either exported or sold in the large towns. In this 

 country, however, they are perhaps gradually being super- 

 seded by the kipper and the bloater ; and a large and 

 increasing trade is continually being conducted in these two 

 kinds of cured fish.* 



In addition, however, to the trade in cured herrings, large 

 and increasing numbers of herrings are annually sold fresh. 

 The railways, in fact, by ensuring a rapid delivery, have 

 enabled fish to be sold fresh, which half a century ago could 

 not possibly have reached the fish markets in good order. 

 The fish which are caught on the English, Manx, and Irish 

 coasts, are to a great extent disposed of in this way ; and 

 fresh herrings form one of the cheapest kinds of animal food 

 procurable in the United Kingdom. 



Herrings are measured in Scotland by the cran. A cran 

 contains thirty-six gallons and holds from about 800 to lOOO 



* The colour is given to the red herring — which is occasionally a 

 yellow herring — by the fuel with which it is smoked ; by altering the 

 fuel the curer can alter the colour of the cured fish. Perhaps few 

 people know that the term kipper is derived from the kype or hook on 

 the lower jaw of the spawning male salmon. The male salmon from 

 this kype became known as the kipper. The male fish was usually 

 cured, and known as kipper salmon. The term was soon corrupted 

 into kippered salmon, and the word "kipper" turned into a verb 

 became synonymous with to cure. Bloaters are an invention of the 

 present century. 



