20 THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 



162,000 barrels of herrings and fish of other sorts, worth 

 ;^82,ooo, were exported ; in 1882, 920,000 barrels of herrings, 

 worth ^1,383,000, and fish of other kinds, worth ;^ 440,000, 

 were sent abroad. The import trade has increased rather 

 more, the export trade rather less, than sixfold in the forty 

 years. The export trade is divided into four branches. 

 The first and most important is the trade in Scotch 

 herrings ; the second is the trade in cured cod and ling ; 

 the third is the trade in Cornish pilchards ; the fourth is 

 the trade in fresh fish with Paris and other Continental 

 towns. The causes which produce trade are curious ; the 

 demands which create it difficult of explanation. The 

 earliest and most valuable Scotch herrings are sold to the 

 upper classes in Northern and Eastern Europe ; the bulk 

 of the Scotch herrings are consumed in the Protestant 

 States of Germany ; Cornish pilchards find their principal 

 market in Italy ; while the cod and ling, which are caught 

 chiefly in the Shetland Islands and Northern Scotland, are 

 sold in Spain. It is not, at first sight, clear why the 

 German should prefer a herring to a pilchard, and an 

 Italian the pilchard to a herring. But the Italian is usually 

 a Roman Catholic ; the Roman Catholics buy fish as food, 

 and the Italian, therefore, purchases a rich oily fish like the 

 pilchard. The higher classes in Spain buy cod for the 

 same reasons which make the salt cod of Newfoundland 

 the usual dish in English households on the first and last 

 day of Lent. The German Protestant, on the -contrary, 

 eats his herrings, not as his chief food, but as a relish. He 

 likes his herrings, as he likes his hams, cured by salt, but 

 uncooked by fire. 



It is said in Northern Scotland that the trade between 

 Spain and the Shetland Isles in dried fish has existed since 

 the reign of Elizabeth. Some vessels of the great Armada 



