SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 79 



fish-canning trade, particularly with regard to the practically 

 unutilised British sprats. A good deal of scientific research 

 work was initiated — and subsequently abandoned — but even 

 this never got beyond the tentative laboratory phase. The 

 application of laboratory methods to the investigation and 

 improvement of the routine factory processes was never 

 attempted — though such an extension is absolutely essential 

 if the investigations are to benefit the industry. But even this 

 display of interest in the canning trades had its effect, for there 

 was a kind of incipient boom about the end of the war and 

 several fish-canning enterprises on a large scale were projected, 

 and certainly those engaged in the embryo British fish-canning 

 industry were keenly alive to the value of experiment and 

 investigation. Now an export trade is the essential condition 

 for further development of the British herring, mackerel, 

 pilchard and sprat fisheries, and headway in this can best be 

 made by concentrating on canning. The pickled herring 

 remains good for about a year and then rapidly and steadily 

 deteriorates, while the herring or sprat canned in tomato 

 sauce improves up to five years, or if canned in oil, up to ten 

 years. In its keeping qualities, then, as well as in its much 

 greater intrinsic and commercial value, the canned fish is 

 obviously the basis of an export trade. But the bulk of the 

 sprats and herrings at present canned in Great Britain are 

 inferior in quality, and both scientific and industrial research 

 is essential to the development of the trade. 



As things are it is probable that something in the nature 

 of a bounty on fish canned for export may also be indispensable. 

 It would stimulate production, for an abatement of the Excess 

 Profits Duty (which would have been, in effect, a bounty) 

 might have led to greater output in 1917. Further, a 

 bounty would have stimulated trade by leading to an improve- 

 ment of the product — I assume that the payment of the " dole " 

 would be made contingent upon a satisfactory inspection by a 



