FISH AND FISHERIES. 145 
described, and the hooks being baited, the lines are neatly coiled in 
half-bushel baskets, clear for running out. The baskets are placed in 
two strong-built lugsail boats, and at 3 o’clock in the afternoon both 
make sail together at right angles from the vessel on opposite sides. 
When the lines are run out straight, they are sunk to within 2 feet of 
the bottom. At daybreak next morning the boats proceed to trip the 
sinkers at the extremites of the lines, and while the crew of each boat 
are hauling in line and unhooking fish the men on board heave in the 
other end of the lines with a winch. In this way 400 of the larger 
bank cod are commonly taken in a night. The fish are cleaned and 
salted on board, and stowed in the hold in bulk; the livers to be boiled 
for oil are put in large casks, secured on deck.” "We may observe that 
the French method mentioned above of treating the cod livers is not to 
be recommended, the extremely disagreeable smell of cod-liver oil being 
due entirely to the putrefied condition of the livers. To have a per- 
fectly sweet and pure oil, it should be obtained by the moderate appli- 
cation of heat when in an undecomposed state. 
The “harbour and net” fisheries, like those of deeper water, cannot 
be made productive to a much greater extent than at present, without 
increased facilities for bringing the fish fresh to market, and there is no 
more effective way of accomplishing that end than by the use of ice; and 
indeed that is the only suggestion we can make for the improvement 
and development of these harbour fisheries. The boats in use among 
these net fishermen are good and well adapted for the purposes they 
serve ; the seine nets they use are undoubtedly unexcelled in securing 
any fish there may be within their circumference, and the means of 
getting their fish to market seems to be the only trouble to which the 
rather lazy net fishermen are subject. Ice and rapid communication are 
the only effectual remedies for this; but these will be quickly availed 
of as soon as sufficient inducements offer in the shape of immediate 
money profits. 
The trawl net, the chief instrument of capture on the English 
coast, has never come into general use here, and it is probable never 
may to any great extent, owing to the rocky character of our coast. 
If, however, .a detailed survey of our fishing-grounds should prove the 
existence of some sandbanks, the trawl net would be found to be the 
most useful and almost only mode of getting at such fish asthe flounder, 
sole, and John Dory. 
The “special fisheries” are those which like the salmon, the herring, 
the pilchard, the anchovy, the tunny, the mackerel, and other fishes of 
similar habit, appear at certain periods for a short time only, and there- 
fore if they are fished for at all must be fished for and utilized in a very 
different way from the every-day fishes. They differ from the other 
fisheries also, in so far as the fishes of the special class have a value 
chiefly arising from some particular mode of preparing them for the 
local market or exportation—the numbers in which they are generally 
taken far exceeding the possible demazd for them in a fresh state. 
The sea mullet (Mugil grandis) is, of all our fishes, the one that gives 
greatest inducements for a special fishery. In the months of April and 
May it makes its appearance in very large shoals on our coast, never 
going far from land, always proceeding in a northerly direction, and 
T 
