there are cockles, clams or sand-mussels (Mya
arenaria); crabs, lobsters, and prawns, au naturel,
in their unboiled state; there are fish, male and
female, showing that, as a general rule, the
gentleman is long and slender, while the lady is
short and stout. There is an infant dolphin,
seeing that a full-grown fellow would be rather
inconvenient to bottle, and there are adult
mackerel of royal aspect. A noble salmon, from
the Baltic, makes one wonder how he would
taste— as the New Zealander said of the
missionary — if taken out of his alcoholic pickle.

Fish are peculiarly unfortunate in offering a
double motive for their destruction. They are
caught on account of their own culinary merits,
and they are caught to lure other fish to their
death. Every marine creature, and every part
of it, serves as bait; exemplified especially by
cuttle-fish, mussels (scraped from the bottom of
the sea by an iron drag with a bag behind it),
sand-eels, which burrow like a mole before you
have time to lay a finger on them, and that
strong-stomached worm, the Arenicola
piscatorum, which thrives and fattens by swallowing
an unlimited allowance of sand.

Sponges are self-manufactured products of the
sea, the main difficulty being to get them. The
same may be said of oysters; because whoever is
unable to open an oyster is deficient in one of the
arts of civilised life. For those who cannot— and
such persons do exist— there are oyster-opening
machines of irresistible action. Give me,
however, the human hand, which neither spills the
juice nor tears the flesh. The natural history of
oysters, or rather of oyster-shells, is illustrated
by Mr. Frank Buckland in a curious series from
England, Ireland, Scotland, France, America.
We have young oysters, or spat, from one to
three weeks old; from nine to fourteen months;
from one to one year and a half old, when
it is called brood; from two to three years, also
brood. At from three to six years old they
attain the rank of natives, being fully
developed and fit for market. Sheppy Island sends
its hem or ham oysters, and the Ile de Ré its
specimens of oyster-breeding. Oysters are seen
adhering to various substances, living and dead:
as pottery, porcelain, glass, welks, and other
shellfish. Sections of oyster-shell show its laminated
structure; pearl oysters from Ceylon and Panama
display the lustre of its internal surface.

Seaweeds, too, may claim a place among
the results of fishing. There is not a single
poisonous seaweed, while many are nutritious
and restorative. They render us enormous
indirect service by affording pasture to legions of
living creatures which supply food to fish, who
are food for men. They gave soda, until we
learned how to make it from salt. Of marine
algae, there are excessively beautiful collections,
some adhering to paper, "nature-printed," looking
more like exquisite paintings of
seaweeds than the realities themselves. This
impression is heightened by the (perhaps too)
formal regularity of their arrangement. Others
are dried and gouped, and so framed under
convex glasses, forming charming bouquets to keep
and admire as souvenirs of the Channel coast.

Among the elements of fishing may be fairly
included books and journals descriptive of fish
and their ways. The Fishes of Scandinavia
appear in coloured plates. Widegren sends his
Researches on the Salmonidae of Sweden. Mr.
Buckland's Fish-Culture attracts the inquiring
eye, as also does his weekly natural-history
paper, Land and Water.

Another category consists of marine products
which have undergone preparation of some kind
or other, overwhelming us with the abundance
of its riches. Cod-liver oil alone makes a
brilliant display; and in saying cod-liver, we must
also include the livers of ling, dog-fish, and
others. It is of every shade intermediate between
Guiness's stout and the palest amber. The
brown quality passes through light brown and
yellow, until it reaches what is called the white
quality, liquefied by steam. This article is
contributed by Norway with special liberality.
Pyramids and temples of cod-liver oil exhibit
its various shades and hues, in flat bottles to
show its clearness, in round bottles to display
the depth of its colour.

But we have not yet done with cod. The
northern nations especially manifest both its
abundance and the store they set by it. In
preparing it, they observe the utmost
economy. Nothing is allowed to be wasted.
For salting, the fish is decapitated. In the
midst of such plenty, improvident people
would throw the heads away; not so the North
Sea fishermen. In the first place, the tongues
not so well known in England as they deserve
to be, our experience being mainly limited to the
sound, or swimming-bladder, which is taken from
the body of the fish— the tongues and their roots
are cut out and salted separately. And for these
processes different qualities of salt are employed.
The cheek-pieces— the white lump of muscle on
each side of the head— are carefully taken out,
salted, and dried separately; also the two delicate
bits of meat at the back or nape of the fish's
neck. The fins are dried, to furnish glue. B.
Lundgreen, of Drontheim, sends salted cods' roes,
of 1866, première qualité; Hans Clausen, of
Christiansund, sends sounds and stomachs.

From her dried cod Norway also makes fisk
meel (fish meal, farine de poisson). While writing
this, I am nibbling a biscuit made of fish
flour. Bordevich and Co., of Lofoten, in
Norway, sell extra fünt fisk meel at less than
tenpence the pound avoirdupois. The bones and
skin and all other useless portions, taken out
before the grinding, are likewise carefully
utilised, dried, and minced fine into fish guano, of
whose fertilising effects learned professors give
most flattering certificates. Agriculturists
inclined to make the experiment may order it
of Det norske Fiskeguanoselskabs Direction i
Christiania (la Direction de la Société du
guano de poisson de Norvége à Christiania).

Other good things, prepared and dried for
transport and future use, are mussel-powder
(muslingnudler) and lobster-powder (hummernudler),
the latter especially serviceable for
sauce, on emergencies. How often has the frantic
cook exclaimed, "Here's the turbot, but where's