342 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



Fish to the value of £60,000 annually are taken at 

 the lake of Tonli-sap, Cambogia, and sold, salted ; also 

 the fish-maws or swimming bladders ; the Chinese use 

 this fish-glue or gelatine largely in cooking and in the 

 arts and industry. There are about twenty principal 

 varieties offish taken, but we have only the native names, 

 which are useless for identification. * 



Ceylon imports many tons of dried fish annually 

 from India and the Maldive Islands. The singularly 

 weird-looking red fire-fish (Pterois mlitans) is much 

 prized as food by the Singhalese, the flesh being firm, 

 white, and nutritious. 



That the water can be made to yield a larger per- 

 centage of nutriment, acre for acre, than the land, is 

 well known. China, with its enormous population, 

 greater to the square mile than that of any other part 

 of the world, derives the largest portion of its animal 

 food from the interior waters of the empire, the methods 

 of fish cultivation there being conducted in a very 

 efficient manner, and every cubic yard of pond and 

 stream thoroughly utilised. 



The samlai or shad of China {Alosa Eeevesn,'Rich.), ac- 

 cording to Mr. Salter, extend their migrations up the 

 Yang-tse-Kiang for over a thousand miles, and, accord- 

 ing to Dr. Macgowan, to a distance of three thousand 

 miles from its mouth. 



The ordinary esculent fish of the seas of the Indian 

 and Philippine islands are numerous. In the markets 

 of Celebes it is said that not fewer than 300 difi"erent 

 species are at one time or another offered for sale. A 

 few of them are of excellent quality, equalling if not 

 surpassing in delicacy and flavour those of the European 

 seas. The curing of ordinary fish and the pickling of 

 prawns forms a considerable branch of trade between 

 the coast and interior.-)- 



* A long descriptive article on this fishery is given in the French 

 " Revue Maritime et Coloniale," vol. Ixi., p. 534. 

 t Orawfurd's "Indian Islands," p. 16. 



