Live game, tortoises, and turtles, are received
with open arms, untaxed. Swarms
of bees pay a franc each, the hive included;
it would be curious to see a return of the
annual number of live swarms so imported.
Leeches are taxed no more than a franc the
thousand in number, or exactly the hundredth
part of a penny each, a nominal tax
which presses lightly on. the patient. But
though leeches are bred in France itself,
and are cheaper than they are in England,
the French people have a decided passion
for phlebotomy, or bloodletting, with the
lancet.

Fresh-water fish, fresh, pays fifty centimes
the hundred kilos, or next to nothing, in
all cases; fresh-water fish, prepared, is
mulcted forty francs for the same quantity,
if brought in by French vessels; forty- four,
if by foreign vessels, or by land. Note,
that the favour shown to French fishing
and French bottoms is carried out throughout
the whole of this portion of the Tarif.
Foreign-caught oysters pay a franc and a
half the thousand; French-caught, nothing;
the same of lobsters, except that, when taxed,
they pay only a franc the hundred kilos.
Mussels and other shell-fish rank with
lobsters. For French-caught sea-fish, nothing
is exacted, if brought into port in French
vessels; otherwise, eleven francs the hundred kilos.
Foreign-caught sea-fish, dry,
salted, or smoked, pay from forty to forty-four
francs the hundred kilos. Fish marine, or
preserved in oil (like sardines) of whatever
fishery, pay (note this) the heavy tax of a
hundred francs the hundred kilos, or half
a franc a pound, if from the stranger;
but only ten francs for the same weight if
from any of the French colonies. Marinéed
oysters pay twenty-five francs for the same
quantity.

The French Tarif is particularly jealous
of all goods, preparations, and provisions,
that are salt, either naturally, artificially,
or accidentally. Lot's wife could never
contrive to get into France, except by the
payment of an entrance-fee, amounting to
considerably more than she was worth.
Red herrings are persecuted with a degree of
virulence which almost amounts to spitefulness.

You reside in France; salmon is scarce;
you long to taste an English fish. Similarly,
you pine for Yarmouth bloaters, of the kind
just dashed with a grain of salt and delicately
perfumed with the smoke of smouldering
oak-wood. There arrive for you, simultaneously,
at some French port, a fine cut
from the middle of a Scotch river-monster,
and a sweet-smelling hamper from the Norfolk
coast. Now, fresh-water fish enters
duty-free, when in small quantities, while
salt fish pays, practically as you find to your
sorrow, more than fifty francs the hundred
kilos. Therefore, Mr. Customs' Officer, inspired
with protectionist patriotism, whips
your salmon and your bloaters into the
same scale at once, weighs them together,
and makes you pay the salt fish duty on the
whole. You protest in vain. Are they not
both addressed to you, arriving by the same
vessel, on the very same day? If you will
commit the sin of introducing salt fish into
France, you must take the consequences.
You see the effects of evil companionship;
you would have had your salmon for nothing,
had it come alone. But the innocent salmon
is justly condemned by its association with
the guilty bloaters. It must suffer the fate
of the stork caught with the cranes. The
fact, though not logical, is historical.

The hard knocks which red herring, Newfoundland
cod, Finnon haddocks, and every
other species of the saline genus, thus receive,
are instigated by a double motive. The first
is pardonable; by depriving the nation of
those luxuries for the rich, those necessaries
for the poor, when derived from any foreign
source whatever, French sailors are driven
to fish for them themselves, and a permanent
school for seamen is established. But—there
is a considerable BUT belonging to it. Nature
often thwarts man's best intentions. The
fish especially adapted for salting, to supply
commerce with the provisions of whole populations,
are almost all northern fish; besides
which, a cool climate is necessary for their
proper preparation. The fleets of fishing-boats
which annually start from Dunkerque
in the spring, to catch cod between the north
of Denmark and the south of Iceland, answer
admirably in every way; they bring home
ample supplies, and they form hardy seamen.
But for herring, the north coast of France is
about their southern boundary; they make
their appearance in the Channel late, often
in scanty quantities and of inferior quality.
So French fishing-boats go and buy ready-caught
fish, of English boats, thereby committing
an illegal and a punishable act, or
they infringe and poach on English fishing-grounds,
giving rise to squabbles, which at
any time may assume a grave importance.
On the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of
France, what fish is there to salt? Nothing
but a few sardines and anchovies,—things to
tickle the palate, not fill the stomach; holding
to cod and herring about the same relation,
if so much, as the little bit of Stilton
after dinner does to the dinner itself. Nature
obstructs France in her attempt to procure
the self-supply of salt-fish necessary for an
empire whose subjects observe a great many
meagre days in the course of the year—
necessary also for the health of the vast
inland population of the central region, where
iodised and saline elements scarcely ever
enter into their food by a natural course,
as happens to the dwellers on the line of
coast.

But there is another motive for the cool
reception given to all salted foreign goods;
and the sooner the French get rid of it