20 
has invented a seine of which a model is in the middle of 
our Cornwall stall (it is the one which has the weight 
attached to it), which he says can be worked at deep sea 
shoals of fish ; and curiously enough, a model of a second 
seine on the same principle, but differing a little in detail, is 
exhibited on the same stall by Mr. Moses Dunn, of Fowey, 
and a third by Mr. Barron of Mevagissey. Practical men 
saw these models, both before they came here and since, 
and pronounced them very pretty little toys, which might 
succeed in a fish pond, but utterly unfit for use at sea. 
Now a full seine costs a large sum of money, and no 
hard-headed capitalist is likely to lay it out on a specu¬ 
lation which the practical men tell him must fail. Well, the 
nets come here, and to them came an American gentleman 
and he said, “You have the precise principle on which we 
are working deep-sea seines in America, and they succeed 
admirably.” 
There is another point which I must not overlook. There 
is an idea of great antiquity, and very generally entertained, 
that mackerel must always be fresh to be good. It is 
perfectly true that mackerel is in its perfection when cooked 
as soon as captured, but if that cannot be done it is like most 
other fish, none the worse for a little keeping. And it is for 
this reason, and because ice takes the flavour out of the fish, 
that I consider dry packing (ie., packing fish-upon-fish 
without ice) preferable to packing in ice; it injures the 
flavour less. But there is another view to be taken. This 
fish is eminently amenable to the action of antiseptics. 
The smallness and fineness of its scale causes an antiseptic 
bath to act upon its skin and gilled surfaces with marked 
effect. I once received two of the large mackerel of which 
I have spoken, which had been caught off the Scilly Isles 
on a Monday night in the month of June (I believe, at all 
