SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 81 



against this tendency it is very difficult to strive. Just now, 

 however, the efforts of the Fisheries Organisation Society seem 

 to be having good results, as witness the Co-operative Societies 

 at Fleetwood and Morecambe — enterprises that appear to me 

 to have all the elements of success. There is no doubt at all 

 that much more could be done to make shrimping and prawning 

 as carried on by these Societies more highly profitable. I was 

 told, at Morecambe, that there were, occasionally, " gluts " 

 of shrimps, and that some means of preserving the " picked " 

 product was very desirable. Here, then, there is an opportunity 

 for industrial research : say, the preparation of fish and (real) 

 Crustacean pastes ; the " potting " of shrimps and prawns 

 hi various ways in hermetically-sealed glass vessels, and the 

 preservation of picked shrimps by packing in sterilised bottles, 

 as in the case of fruits. It is quite likely that all these methods 

 may be sound ones from the commercial point of view , but they 

 have all to be tested, and for this purpose machinery must be 

 obtained. It would, no doubt, be difficult for the Co-operative 

 Societies to obtain the plant and work this during the necessary 

 experimental period. In short, a small experimental and 

 demonstration factory is wanted, and, since there is little hope 

 of obtaining this through the ordinary official channels, I make 

 the suggestion to the Fisheries Organisation Society. So far 

 as the inshore industry is concerned it is, hitherto, only the 

 latter Society that has been able to " deliver the goods." 



Musselling and Cockling. 



The process of decadence is now nearly complete with 

 regard to the shell-fisheries. The general ascription of the cause 

 of enteric fever to sewage-polluted mussels and cockles has 

 closed many markets and some mussel beds. I regard what 

 has happened during the last dozen years as highly discreditable 

 to public administration. The evidence that outbreaks of 

 typhoid fever were set up by the contamination of mussels by 

 sewage was, in all cases, strong enough to justify remedial 



