INTRODUCTORY. 9 
mere curiosity, he will not be long in welcoming as 
a change from the more hackneyed sole and turbot, 
the latter too often cooked in the abominable 
“portion,” in which form it retains about the same 
amount of nutriment that one would expect to get 
out of a piece of boiled flannel. The colonials and 
foreigners who recently visited our capital, and who 
must from time to time have heard much of the 
British fishing industry, may have experienced 
more than one rude shock as regards the poor 
choice of fish both at the restaurant and on the 
private table. It is not improbable that the new 
recruit to the sport of sea-fishing may learn to 
appreciate the. taste of a large number of fish of 
the very existence of which he had no previous 
suspicion. Some, as the pollack, coal-fish, and 
wrasses, he will not try more than once; but 
others, as the grotesque couple above mentioned, 
will, if properly cooked, be to his jaded palate a 
delight. Nay, he may even hook a red mullet or 
two—I have not done so in the course of fifteen 
years of steady sea fishing, but am beginning to 
regard this as exceptional bad luck—and there is 
no finer mouthful of animal food in the sea or out 
of it. At the same time, I cannot seriously include 
under the heading of “ edible” sea fish the eighty- 
eight species so described by Professor McIntosh 
in his recent interesting work on our food-fishes ; 
or even, for the matter of that, Mr. Cunningham’s 
seventy. Both these estimates are surely over- 
generous, and thirty kinds of British sea-fish are in 
all probability as many as most of us would care 
to try. 
One word with reference to the imperative need 
of eating only the freshest of fish. This is capable 
of exaggeration. Mackerel and, in summer weather, 
