60 THE WANT OF STATISTICS. 



always on hand large stocks of all Mnds of dried fish, which are 

 carried away in great waggons to the railway stations for country 

 distribution. About four o'clock on a summer morning this 

 grand piscatorial mart may be seen in its fuU excitement — ^the 

 auctioneers bawling, the porters rushing madly about, the 

 hawkers also rushing madly about seeking persons to join them 

 in buying a lot, so as to divide their speculations ; and all over 

 is sprinkled the dripping sea-water, and all around we feel that 

 peculiar perfume which is the concomitant of such a place. No 

 statistics of a reliable kind are published as to the value of the 

 British fisheries. An annual account of the Scottish herring- 

 fishery is taken by commissioners and officers appointed for that 

 purpose ; which, along with a yearly report of the Irish fisheries, 

 are the only reliable annual documents on the subject that we 

 possess, and the latest official report of the commissioners wiU 

 be found analysed iu another part of this volume. For any 

 statistics of our white-fish fisheries we are compelled to resort 

 to second-hand sources of information ; and, as is likely enough 

 in the circumstances, we do not, after all, get our curiosity 

 properly gratified on these important topics — the progress and 

 produce of the British fisheries. 



