146 NEW SOUTH WALES 
showing a disposition to enter every inlet and harbour in its course. It 
is. then in the finest condition, and full of roe. Its annual migration at 
that period is simply in search of suitable spawning grounds. We are 
convinced that with proper appliances, and under proper restrictions, 
the mullet fishery at this time, lasting probably six weeks, might be 
made of very great value to the Country. The quantity which could be 
consumed in a fresh state during the fishery would be in a very small 
proportion to the numbers captured, and it would therefore be necessary, 
in order to utilize the vast numbers of this fine fish then offering itself 
for our use, to hit upon some means of preserving the larger portion for 
future use in a marketable form. At present it is not unusual to salt 
and smoke it, but its very fatness and excellence make it a bad fish for 
this mode of treatment——it takes the salt too readily, and is apt to 
become rancid. The roe, however, salted and smoked, is equal to any-- 
thing of the kind in the world, and in that state is always rapidly 
bought up in any quantity. 
It is evident that with a fish of such richness and delicacy no plan 
can be so good for preserving its excellence of flavour as that generally 
adopted in the case of the salmon—a fish possessing many of the same 
‘qualities—boiling and heremetically sealing in tin cans. The form of 
the tin need not be exactly the same as we are accustomed to see salmon 
in—in fact there is considerable variety even in that, the Dutch practice 
being to tin salmon in long cans holding each two full-sized fish. The 
process is extremely simple. 
At the Columbia River (where in 1876 the quantity canned was 
428,730 cases, each containing 4 dozen 1-lb. tins, or about 23,000,000 
Ibs.), they cut the fish up with a number of curved knives—say seven or 
eight—with a lever attached. -The fish are laid on a bench, and the 
lever being pulled down, the knives cut the fish into sections the size of 
the tin, whether 1, or 2, or 4 ibs. There are more 1 Ib. tins put up 
than those of 2 lbs. or 4 lbs. Then the fish are put into the tin, and a 
small tea-spoonful of salt is added to each can, to take away any 
unnatural flavour. The cansare then put into a large boiler and heated 
with steam, and after the fish have boiled a certain time, say twenty 
minutes under the greatest heat they can get—the steam is 210 degrees, 
but then they get the heat up to 280 degrees by the addition of 
chemicais. 
They put salt into the water to enable it to be brought to a greater 
heat than the boiling-point of pure water. The salt alone would not 
bring it up to 280 degrees, but they use chloride of calcium. Then 
after the fish are cooked a certain time the screen that the cans are on is 
raised out of the boiler, and a man goes round them with a little mallet, 
having a small spike on it, and he taps every one of the cans, by which 
means the gas that has accumulated in the cans escapes. After the fish 
have settled down he solders the small hole, lowers the screen with the 
cans again into the boiler, and the water is raised to the boiling point, 
so as to produce steam inside the cans. "When they are taken out and 
cooled the steam condensirig produces a vacuum in each can, and the 
cans are then passed into a place where they are left for one, two, or 
three days, to see that they are perfectly tight. 
