THE COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS OF THE SEA. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. Importance of marine products-Uses of the animals--Number of species of fishes-French bounty on fisheries-Statistics of British fisheries-Fish as an article of food-Definition of "prime" and "offal" in the London market-Quantity of fish brought to London-Value of fish and other marine products imported-Value of exports-Statistics of British, French, and North American fisheries-French fisheries, and consumption of fish in Paris-Value of the trade in fish in foreign countries. THE commercial products obtained from the sea are more numerous and important than would be generally supposed by those who have not looked closely into the subject. The huge marine mammals furnish us with valuable oil, skins, whalebone, spermaceti, ambergris, etc., as well as food to some tribes. The utility of fishes, properly so called, to man is not very various. For the most part, they serve only as food; but in this respect they are of the utmost importance to a great part of the human race, who live only on this class of animals. Some savage nations possess the art of preparing fish in a great variety of ways, even as a kind of flour and bread. Fish are also salted and B dried, smoked and potted, preserved in oil, and pounded into a dry mass. In Catholic countries the consumption of fish during their fasts and festivals is very large; all other food being then prohibited by their priests. To a great part of the civilized world the taking of the herring, the pilchard, the mackerel, the cod, the tunny, the salmon, the sardine, and other fishes is of great value, and gives employment to many hundreds of persons. The oil obtained from the shark, cod, herring, and other fish is used for lamps, medicine, and in industry. Many parts of fish are employed in the arts and manufactures—as the scales of the bleak for making false pearls, and those of other fish for making ornaments; the skins for tanning and other purposes. Isinglass is obtained from the air or swimming bladders of many. Fish roes are not only used as food delicacies, but also for bait in the fishing grounds. Fish maws, shark's fins, and bèche-de-mer or trepang (a species of Holothuria) are considered great food delicacies by the Chinese, forming the chief ingredients for their gelatinous soups. The sea is more abundantly stocked with living creatures than the land. In all parts of the world a rocky and partially protected shore perhaps supports, in a given space, a greater number of individual animals than any other station. The sea is filled with animals of several kinds, and each layer of water in depth seems to have its own varieties, thus resembling the changes which take place according to elevation in the organized portions of the land. The animals are among the mightiest and among the smallest. There are swimming beasts, as whales, seals, and walruses; there are fishes of various kinds and sizes, crustaceans, soft or jelly fishes, the molluscs, down to those creatures resembling live plants-the zoophytes or corallines, which partake of the qualities of plant, animal, and mammal. All these are peculiar to the sea or the fresh waters; and the ocean has its marine plants—seaweeds, which remain growing on the ground shoals, or rise to the surface and then float. These, too, have many useful or economic applications. It is not our purpose to speak of the inhabitants of the ocean generally, but only to restrict the investigation to those which are of some use to man. Pliny enumerated but 94 species of fish; Linnæus increased the number to 478; but recent naturalists have described over 13,000 species, one-tenth of which confine themselves to the fresh waters. The human race derives almost incalculable benefits from them, as is evidenced by the extent and value of the river, coast, and sea fisheries of the world. The sea, as Commander Maury well observes, has its offices and duties to perform. So may its inhabitants; consequently he who undertakes to study its phenomena must cease to regard it as a waste of waters. He must look upon it as a part of the exquisite machinery by which the harmonies of nature are preserved, and then he will begin to perceive the developments of order and the evidence of design, which make it a most beautiful and interesting subject for contemplation. The harvest of the sea has not yet been attended to and garnered to the same extent as the land. Some nations, as the Chinese, have, it is true, long given close attention to the profitable utilization of its commercial products, and several European nations and the Americans have also prosecuted certain fisheries; but systematic and scientific management has only of late years been specially directed to the various branches which have been termed pisciculture, aquiculture, and ostreiculture, and the transfer of the fishes of one locality to those of another district. In respect of fish, no natural cause prevents their coexistence in the greatest abundance with man in his highest state of civilization and refinement, in the midst of the greatest agricultural or manufacturing opulence. Easily scared in the first instance by unusual sightsfor it has been proved, by a series of curious and interesting experiments on the trout, that most kinds of fish are insensible to sounds-the natives of the water are speedily reconciled to appearances, which become habitual when found to be connected with no danger. By all civilized and commercial nations-especially the Dutch, the English, the Americans, and the Frenchthe products of the sea have been accounted fully as important as those of the land; because they not only afford cheap, nutritious, and abundant food for the people, but contribute largely, moreover, to the national resources, and to the maintenance of a maritime ascendancy. The Americans and French offer bounties to their fishermen, which of course tells against the fisheries in British America. France pays about 540,000 francs a year, averaging about £2 to each man engaged in the fishery. This is an expensive process, but it is alleged that it would cost twice as much to train an equal number of men for the navy in any other way. In 1861 a French commission, appointed to inquire into the deep-sea fisheries, said in their report, "It is on fisheries that at this day repose all the most serious hopes of our maritime enlistments," and it was added that no other school can compare with this in preparing them so well, and in numbers so important, for the service of the navy." These bounties are also defended on the ground that the French pursue the cod fishery at a great disadvantage of distance, and from having no possessions in the neighbourhood except two rocky islets. The fishery question is of urgent consequence to the people generally. Our population is increasing rapidly; cities and towns are gradually covering fields which used to be available for agriculture; and although steam-farming is increasing the efficiency of husbandry labour, it cannot possibly augment the supply of home-grown food so rapidly as the bread-eaters increase in number. Fish is among the articles of diet which are too little familiarized among us, and any information ought to be welcomed which increases our knowledge of fishing grounds within reach of England. That the supply of fish is most abundant, and indeed inexhaustible, on all our coasts, has never been called in question. "The coasts of Great Britain," says Sir John Boroughs, "doe yield such a continued sea-harvest of gain and benefit to all those that with diligence doe labour in the same, that no time or season in the yeare passeth away without some apparent meanes of profitable employment, especially to such as apply themselves to fishing; which from the beginning of the yeare unto the latter end, continueth upon some part or other of our coastes, and these in such infinite shoales and multitudes of fishes are offered to the takers, as may justly move admiration, not only to strangers, but to those that daily bee employed amongst them." That this harvest, ripe for gathering at all seasons of the year, without the labour of |