SHORES OF THE CLYDE AND FIRTH. 
153 
generally admitted to be true. When the fish caught 
during the warm weather are boxed up and shipped for 
the market, if not sold on the second day after capture, 
turn extremely soft, and very soon get into the putrid 
state. The richness of the fish has, of course, a good deal 
to do with this ; but, as we have already noticed, when 
they find themselves confined within the net they dart 
about seeking a means of escape, and thereby collide and 
smash each other to such an extent, that when taken out of 
the water they are found to be almost destitute of scales ; 
and having died with the blood in their bodies, they are in 
the same state as the flesh of a smothered animal is found 
to be in immediately after death. This is the sole cause 
of the undoubted softness and quickly-decaying nature of 
the fish caught by the trawl, and the reason they can never 
be properly cured — showing always in the latter state, when 
cooked, the vertebra, or back-bone, covered with the black, 
uncured, corroding mass of unescaped blood. 
Herrings caught by the drift-net are, however, both in 
the fresh and cured state, of quite a difl*erent nature. 
Lying as the nets do, with their meshes extended to the 
fullest capacity, the fish swimming across their path 
strike them, and finding themselves entangled, they make a 
backward movement, which has the effect of opening their 
gills and killing them almost instantly, every drop of blood 
in the body the while escaping through the open gills. 
Being allowed time to stiffen, the scales on the body are 
intact, and the fish, of a pure natural colour, will, in its fresh 
state, keep much longer than the other, and, in its cured 
state, for any length of time, showing the bone as pure as 
when taken out of the water. Of the two systems, we are 
inclined to favour the drift-net principle as being the one 
calculated to give the public the steadiest supply, and by 
