288 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



which has to be added the product of the fisheries of 

 Genoa and Sicily. Other countries have attempted to 

 enter into competition in the preservation of fish in oil. 

 Brazil, Spain, Italy, and the United States have tried ; 

 but their efforts, more or less successful, have not been 

 able to compete with the French production. In North 

 America they have tried to preserve in this manner the 

 young of a species of herring, the Alosa menhaden. Lately, 

 too, a company was formed in Cornwall to convert young 

 pilchards into sardines ; and no doubt a good many sprats 

 are occasionally put up in tins as sardines. 



Anchovies. — The anchovy {Engraulis encrasicolus) is 

 another fish, the catching and preserving of which gives 

 extensive employment on the French Atlantic coast and 

 in the Mediterranean. The value of these fish caught 

 on the French coasts is returned at about £16,000 per 

 annum. The fishing is carried on from May to October. 

 Bayonne, Por't Vendres, St. Jean de Luz, Marseilles, 

 D'Agde, Douarnenez, and L'Orient are the principal 

 ports for anchovies. At Marseilles the annual average 

 value of fresh fish caught is over £1,000. A smaller and 

 more delicate kind of anchovy {E. meletta, Lin.), is also 

 caught in the Mediterranean. Small sardines are very 

 often put up as anchovies. After gutting and removing 

 the head, they are washed and simply placed in barrels 

 with layers of salt, and a little reddish ochrous earth 

 added to give them colour. The mineral used to colour 

 the fish is rather dangerous, but fortunately the fish 

 are never used without being previously well washed in 

 water, which removes most of the colouring substance, 

 that might otherwise prove injurious. The Romans used 

 to prepare with the intestines of the anchovy a sauce of 

 a detestable odour, and so strong that it burnt the tongue 

 and the palate. 



Mr. Couch, in his " Cornish Fauna," says the anchovy 

 abounds there towards the end of summer and if atten- 

 tion were paid to the fishery, enough might be caught to 

 supply the consumption of the British Islands ; and also 

 adds that he has seen it in the Cornish seas of the length 



