279 Supply of fish in Great Britain. 
a considerable town in any part of this country which has 
not a regular supply of fresh fish. Year by year the more 
remote fishing stations are being reached by the railway. 
The immediate effect of this is to increase the price in the 
fishing towns and neighbourhoods which had previously the 
command of the supply,—while any general rise of price is, 
on the other hand, checked by new fishing stations being 
brought within the range of supply. It has thus been found. 
that the new demand, arising from railway access to the 
central parts of the country, is to a great extent met by 
supplies from fishing ports which were formerly compara- 
tively isolated. The result is a greater equality of price, 
and no material advance in the cost of the coarser kinds of 
fish which are most abundant, and are most consumed by 
the less wealthy class of the people. 
Plaice has not, at any time from 1856, up to the present 
time, been lower than during the last three years, and, on 
the whole, there seems to have been no marked alteration 
of price. The case has been very different at Newcastle- 
on-Tyne. Every kind of fish there, with the exception of 
lobsters and crabs, has doubled its price in the course of the 
last ten years. The reason is obvious. The dwellers on the 
sea coast have now no longer a monopoly of the supply of 
the fish caught on their shores. They must share it with 
the great towns of the interior, to which railway facilities 
are every year affording readier and cheaper access, and 
with which the telegraph places the fish-dealers in constant 
communication. The inhabitants of Newcastle, while de- 
ploring the yearly increasing cost of their fish, have this 
consolation, that the highest price they have ever yet been 
called on to pay is considerably lower than the lowest price 
in Manchester, during any part of the period under review. 
A very important element of the question concerning the 
supply of a nutritious article of food is the price of the 
finest kinds of fish, when compared with that of the more 
common descriptions which, from their abundance and 
moderate price, are naturally extensively consumed among 
the less wealthy classes of the people. The largest pro- 
portion of this description of fish consists of herrings and 
sprats. The-statistics of the Scotch herring fishery, prove 
satisfactorily that, taking periods of five years, there is a 
steadily progressive increase of supply. The sprat fishery 
is of greatly less importance, and fluctuates considerably, 
but shows no sign of over-fishing, or permanent decrease. 
On the east coast of England, and in the London fish 
