deposit their spawn, and a score of other familiar
facts. Warm seas produce but poor-fleshed
fish. Maury even tells us that the fish of the
sea afford perhaps the best indication as to the
cold currents in it. The Atlantic cities and
towns of America owe their excellent
fishmarkets to the stream of coId water from the
north, which runs along the coast. The temperature
of the Mediterranean is four or five
degrees above the ocean temperature of the
same latitude; and the fish there are mostly
indifferent. On the other hand, the temperature
along the American coast is several degrees
below that of the ocean, and from Maine to
Florida tables are supplied with the most
excellent of fish. The sheep's-head of this cold
current, so much esteemed in Virginia and the
Carolinas, loses it flavour and is considered
worthless when taken on the warm coral-banks
of the Bahamas. The same is the case with
other fish. In the cold water of that coast,
they are delicious; in the warm water on the
other edge of the Gulf Stream, their flesh is soft
and unfit for table.

A cold-watered country, rich in first-rate fish,
has recently set the example of comparing what
rhymesters call "the finny prey." Bergen, in
Norway, opened, in 1865, an International
Fisheries Exhibition, original in design and spirited
in execution; this year, Boulogne-sur-Mer has
given the idea still fuller development, and
illustrating amply not merely the catching of,
but everything that has reference to, salt-water
or fresh-water fish.

The Boulogne Exposition Internationale de
Peche is extremely attractive to the eye. It is
interesting to the mind also, exciting curiosity
and inviting inquiry. Many of the objects
exhibited are as new to the educated as to the
illiterate public; and it is both socially and
commercially important. It is, moreover,
eminently international.

For the holding of such an Exhibition,
Boulogne is particularly fortunate in her central
position amidst the grand community of fishermen.
This year, she is also favoured by
circumstances. Having recently erected a
new covered fish-market, containing two noble
halls and their appendages, she handsels them
with this admirable display before yielding
them up to the dealers in fish. Such an
opening will doubtless bring good luck with
it. But the crowning element of success is to
be found in the intelligent spirit and the perfect
courtesy displayed by the gentlemen connected
with the undertaking; among whom I am
bound to signalise the name of Monsieur
Edmond Magnier, the Adjoint Secretary.

On the quay, near the bridge leading to the
railway station, is a bronze statue of Edward
Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination, who for a
while resided in Boulogne. Facing this statue,
the new Halle aux Poissons occupies an
irregular plot of ground. You enter by the
passage through which fish will be carted
into the wholesale market; and here, at the
outset, M. Boucher de Perthes meets you
with a retrospective collection of the flint
arms and weapons found in the gravel-pits of
Abbeville and Amiens. There is also a bit of an
ancient net; there are stone weights for nets,
and models of fishhooks made of thorns, employed
from the remotest antiquity. Primeval fishernen
seem to have had no metal whatever.
Afterwards, while metals were still rare, our
ancestors of the age of bronze and the beginning
of the age of iron employed polished stone and
the bones of animals for every available purpose.
And now, although the Greenlanders have iron,
they use it with the utmost economy. In the
interesting series sent by the Copenhagen
Ethnographical Society, most of the objects are
ornamented with bone. There is a barbed harpoon
made of bone, a barbed trident cut entirely of the same
material, and a lance of bone and iron combined.
The Swedes, who fish the lakes Aniucen and
Ouenern, ballast their nets with bones.

The contents of the Exhibition are, first, the
fishes themselves, preserved in spirits. Most
of these are contributed by the Museum of
Bergen. From England, Mr. Buckland has sent
a series of eight specimens showing the
development of salmon, from the egg to a year
old, when ready to go to sea as a smalt. He
also shows a new ornamental fresh-water fish,
the "gold schley," from Germany (of the
colour of the gold fish, with a few dark spots,
and resembling the red mullet in shape),
recently introduced to England by the Acclimatisation
Society. Among the series are young
herring, in various stages, from four to twenty-eight
weeks old, proving, by comparison, what
our Yarrel taught us, that whitebait are not
baby-herring, but a distinct species. The cod
series, too, is curious. It consists of cod-roe,
nearly arrived at maturity; roe artificially
fecundated, three or four hours, eleven or
twelve hours, two or three days, a week,
sixteen days, after spawning. These are
illustrated by magnified drawings. In the last, the
young fish are fully developed and ready to
burst the shell. And then come the minutest
of codlings, caught on the surface of the sea, in
the finest of nets, in different stages of
development, until they may be considered capable
of going alone and taking care of themselves,
for which they are blessed with a capital appetite.
On buying a whole cod, it is always
worth while to see what curiosities its stomach
contains. On one such occasion, I found a
black puppy dog; the fishmonger, who
presided over the operation, had taken the knife
which performed it out of the stomach of
another codfish.

To estimate the value of this raw material,
we harve only to remember that fish are the
grand restorers of human wastefulness in
respect to what, we allow to flow into the sea.
With them are brought back to land valuable
elements which man allows the land to become
exhausted of. And so here we have the taper
eel. the glittering sprat, the dingy coal-fish, the
spotted plaice, herring of divers local varieties,
showing the kinds peculiar to certain
fishing-grounds. There is the speckled trout of
different ages, three, four, and five years old;