ABOUT FISHING.

How many recollections do these fishing-boats, now hauled up and lying idle on the beach, revive!

They tell of long hours of toil, of longer hours still of weary watching and waiting; they tell of dangers braved, of storms endured, of exposure to cold winds and drenching spray. They suggest all the dangers of the deep to which some of their number have succumbed, leaving widows and orphans to mourn for—

But just now we do not want so much to dwell on the hardships and dangers of the fisherman’s lot, as the produce of his toil and the result of his fishing.

Those of you who have been to seaport towns have sometimes watched the fleet of fishing-boats going out to sea.

If there is a smart breeze blowing, and the sun is shining, it is as pretty a sight as you are likely to see; the strong heavy boats running before the wind, and the sun lighting up their dull brown sails. They will remain out perhaps for a day or two if the fish are scarce, but if plentiful, they will bring in their hauls, and dispose of them at fair prices.

Now, perhaps some of you who are fond of fish are disposed to ask why fish is so dear, as you so seldom get any on that account. Well, the principal fault lies with the retailer or shopkeeper: the fisherman only receives from 3d. to 4d. a lb. for his prime fish, but those who buy it, or the consumers, pay from 1s. to 1s. 6d. a lb. When at a watering-place last year, we paid 2s. a lb. for soles that were caught off the coast.

Of course some allowance is to be made for the perishable nature of the commodity, but when that has been done, it does seem that we have to pay far too dearly for that which is so plentiful.

Besides, the facilities of conveyance are so much greater than they were formerly. Then the trade was carried on from Yarmouth to London by light four-horse vans, and in that way some 2000 tons were conveyed every year; but now that quantity is sent to London by rail every fortnight.

In the fishing-grounds on the south and south-east coasts, steamers go out to the fleets and bring up the fish very quickly to Billingsgate every day.

The largest traffic is with fish that are taken in shoals. Off Scarborough from seven to eight hundred tons of herrings have been taken and sent away at one time; and on the Suffolk coast £14,000 worth of fish were taken in a single day.

Then mackerel has its seasons, when the hauls are enormous; this fish is much liked for its solidity, and also for its delicacy. You boys and girls can get a good mouthful without fear of bones if you are ordinarily careful; and you may imagine they are relished when you are told that the consumption in London alone, every year, is 25,000,000. There is quite a numeration sum for many of you, and very few will at all realise what an enormous quantity those figures convey?

But perhaps of all fish, pilchards are taken in the largest quantities. They are caught chiefly off the coast of Devon and Cornwall, and when marinated or potted are much liked. Many a nice jar of potted pilchards do the mothers in the west of England prepare and send to different parts; and if some of you who never tasted them, once had a jar sent you, you would think them a fine “institution.”

The shoals are often of enormous extent; one was computed to extend over a hundred miles, and no doubt many millions were captured. Besides the home consumption, they are packed in oil and shipped to Italy and different parts in the Mediterranean.

Now we wonder if the thought has entered the minds of any of you, that with so many taken they will become by and by very scarce; and this refers not only to pilchards, but to fish generally.

If so, you are by no means singular, for lately a Royal Commission has considered the subject, and we believe that the supply of fish is inexhaustible. It has been ascertained that far more fish are destroyed by creatures of their own race than by man, that by far greater slaughter goes on under the water than above it.

We have counted as many as fifteen or twenty small fish inside a cod, and often as many herrings have been discovered to have been swallowed by one of the same species. A calculation then has been made: allowing a cod two herrings a day for seven months of the year, it was found that if “the cod and ling caught on the Scotch coast in 1861 had been left in the water, they would have devoured as many herrings as were caught by all the fishermen of Scotland, and 6000 more, in the same year.”

So that you see, instead of making fish scarce by catching them, there are actually more because of all the fishing that goes on. There is no fear, therefore, that we shall ever exhaust the stock; and besides, the rate of increase is so enormous. Little have you thought, perhaps, when you were eating the roe of a herring, that you were crunching up thousands and thousands of eggs. A single herring has been found to contain 36,000; a mackerel half-a-million; a sole a million; a flounder a million and a quarter; whilst a cod has been known to possess 3,400,000 eggs.

Truly these may be said to be some of the wonders of the sea, and glad shall we be if this hurried paper leads any of our readers to study the wisdom and goodness of God in the great deep.