4 The Commercial Products of the Sea. 



and scientific management has only of late years been 

 specially directed to the various branches which have been 

 termed pisciculture, aquiculture, and ostreiculture, and the 

 transfer of the fishes of one locality to those of another 

 district. 



In respect of fish, no natural cause prevents their co- 

 existence in the greatest abundance with man in his 

 highest state of civilization and refinement, in the midst 

 of the greatest agricultural or manufacturing opulence. 



Easily scared in the first instance by unusual sights — 

 for it has been proved, by a series of curious and interesting 

 experiments on the trout, that most kinds of fish are 

 insensible to sounds — the natives of the water are speedily 

 reconciled to appearances, which become habitual when 

 found to be connected with no danger. 



' By all civilized and commercial nations — especially 

 the Dutch, the English, the Americans, and the French — 

 the products of the sea have been accounted fully as 

 important as those of the land ; because they not only 

 afi'ord cheap, nutritious, and abundant food for the 

 people, but contribute largely, moreover, to the national re- 

 sources, and to the maintenance of a maritime ascendancy. 

 The Americans and French ofi"er bounties to their fisher- 

 men, which of course tells against the fisheries in British 

 America. 



France pays about 540,000 francs a year, averaging 

 about £2 to each man engaged in the fishery. This is an 

 expensive process, but it is alleged that it would cost twice 

 as much to train an equal number of men for the navy in 

 any other way. In 186 1 a French commission, appointed 

 to inquire into the deep-sea fisheries, said in their report, 

 " It is on fisheries that at this day repose all the most 

 serious hopes of our maritime enlistments," and it was 



