Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/366

 352 families. For some years, the dog-fish has afforded lucrative employment during the whole of the summer to the fishermen from the Naze to the Cape. It is, however, mostly smoked, and in this way is considered rather a delicacy. It is also dried and split as stock-fish for consumption in the country, as well as for export to Sweden, where it is greatly appreciated. It is likewise elsewhere a common article of food, amid the choice of a variety of other fish, especially in the west of England, and, indeed, is valued by some who are far above the necessity of classing it with their ordinary articles of subsistence. It is used both fresh and salted, but, when eaten fresh, it is skinned before being cooked. Lacipede, who speaks slightingly of its flesh, informs us that, in the north of Europe, the eggs, which are about the size of a small orange, and consist solely of a pale-colored yolk, are in high esteem. If prejudice could be got over, there is no doubt they would form an agreeable as well as a nourishing article of food, as a substitute for other eggs in our domestic economy.

The shark-fishery is carried on in many parts of the Indian Ocean, and on the eastern coast of Africa, and recently it has been pursued on the coast of Norway. About Kurrachee, in India, as many as 40,000 sharks are taken in the year. The back-fins are much esteemed as a food delicacy in China, from 7,000 to 10,000 of these being shipped to that empire annually from Bombay. In Norway and Iceland the inhabitants make indiscriminate use of every species captured, hanging up the carcasses for a whole year, like hams, that the flesh may become mellow. The liver, however, appears to be strictly prohibited everywhere, as a dangerous article of food.

Mr. N. Brabazon, in his "Fisheries of Ireland," in allusion to the large shoals of sharks which pass annually along the west coast, on their way from the southern to the northern seas, speaks particularly of the basking shark: "These fish are worth from £35 to £50 each; and when so many as five hundred have been killed in one season, this class of fishing should be well attended to for the short season it lasts, if the weather is favorable to it, especially as it is at a time when other fish are out of season. The fishermen have a superstition that the fish will leave the coast if the bodies of those caught were brought to the shore." Mr. P. L. Simmons, in his "Waste Products and Undeveloped Substances," gives almost incredible statistics of the vast amount of fish-refuse which is either left to rot on the coasts and putrefy the air, or thrown back into the sea unutilized, both on our own and on foreign shores; and he significantly points to its value as a manure not far inferior to guano, of which this country alone requires 200,000 tons a year, and pays upward of £22,000,000. Would it not, therefore, be wise for enterprise and capital to begin to turn more attention to the manufacture of fish-guano, of which the debris of the North American fisheries, and those of the North Sea, would furnish ample material?—Chambers Journal.