Commercial Products of the Sea. 
75 
in nature, mineral waters are far more efficacious in their 
effects than any that can be artificially prepared, even if 
in accordance with a seemingly identical formula. It would 
be for the advantage of invalids were sea-salt and sea¬ 
water added to their list of necessaries by druggists and 
country physicians. Sea-water can be carried, at moderate 
rates, to very great distances, and if pure at first will long 
remain in good condition. 
So also there exists in sea-weed a valuable agent for 
the external treatment of many forms of chronic disease, 
analogous to that found in the natural deposits of certain 
mineral springs. 
Fish-oils in general are by no means yet completely 
utilized. Hundreds of barrels of cod-livers are thrown 
away every year by vessels that put into or belong to 
Newport alone. The oil can be prepared without offence, 
as is constantly being done by one of our citizens, and in¬ 
deed from fresh livers it can be extracted by any house¬ 
wife over her kitchen fire. With the amount of livers that 
could be procured from Block Island and along our imme¬ 
diate shores quite a manufactory of the oil could be sup¬ 
plied at Newport. Certain writers consider the oil from 
skate-livers fully equal, if not superior, to that from cod- 
livers, while it is probable that the liver of the shark and 
still more the enormous liver of the sword-fish, of which so 
many are taken each summer off Block Island and are 
sold from Newport, would prove capable of yielding oil of 
decided medicinal value. Great numbers of sharks are 
yearly captured in the nets around Newport, and are cut 
up for lobster-bait, while their livers are thrown away. 
The great basking-sharks to be found on our coasts yield 
from five to twenty barrels of liver each. When this liver 
is in its best condition it is said that six barrels of it will 
produce five barrels of oil, of thirty gallons each. At times 
the dog-fish, which is a small shark, are so plentiful in 
this vicinity as to seriously embarrass the fishermen. The 
sun-fish, which is occasionally brought into Newport as a 
