174 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
I have here given a return of the trawlers belonging to this 
port from the year 1855, when they were 54, to the present 
time, when they are 70. This number has fluctuated upwards 
and downwards. So far back as 1865 there were actually 72 
trawlers, two more than at present, showing that at all events 
the trawling industry has not made any advance. I have 
ascertained from the best sources that the fish landed at Plymouth 
for the past four years has averaged 4000 tons per annum, which, 
upon calculation that the average price is £18 per ton, gives the 
annual value at £72,000. This does not include pilchards, say 
500 tons annually, which we from some strange reason send into 
Cornwall for curing and shipment to the Mediterranean, and 
which realize in Plymouth about £15 per ton. This gives us a 
total of £79,500 as the annual value at Plymouth of the fish 
exported. The produce of fish at Plymouth has been nearly 
equal for the years 1880, 1881, 1882, and 1883; 75 per cent, 
more than in 1876 and 1877 ; and 50 per cent, more than in the 
year 1879. 
I find it given in evidence that the corresponding figure for 
Brixham is from £52,000 to £57,000 worth of fish exported 
annually. No estimate has been given of the Penzance output, 
but the capital value of the fleet working that port -is stated to be 
£200,000, besides the produce of fifty or sixty East-Country 
boats for a certain portion of the year. This represents an annual 
output of about £144,000. The capital invested in the boats at 
St. Ives is given as £176,000, on an annual output of about the 
same as Penzance. You can thus see that the carriage of this 
vast quantity of food is an item of the first importance in the 
receipts of railway companies, and its quick dispatch a matter of 
vital interest to the county. Up to now there has existed a 
rigidity about the railway rates for fish, which operates prejudicially 
to the welfare of the public as well as to the fisherman. In this 
way the fish rates are now fixed, but it is well known that no 
commodity varies more or depreciates quicker than fish. If 
the catches are great, it not unfrequently happens that it is 
better to cart the fish on to the land for manure than send it to 
the market — this, with so rich, nutritive, and necessary a food for 
our towns' populations, ought not to be. It naturally occurs that the 
mutual principle ought to be introduced in some way, if it would 
tend to equalize and, I might argue, increase the railway receipts 
