Fish commerce being an industry naturally arising out of the immediate wants of mankind, has unfortunately, as regards the article dealt in, been invested with an amount of exaggeration that has no parallel in other branches of industry. Blunders perpetrated long ago in Encyclopædias and other works, when the life and habits of all kinds of fish, from the want of investigation, were but little understood, have been, with those additions which under such circumstances always accumulate, handed down to the present day, so that even now we are carrying on some of our fisheries on altogether false assumptions, and in many cases evidently killing the goose for the sake of the golden egg: in other words, never dreaming that there will be a fishing to-morrow, which must be as important, or even more important, than the fishing of to-day, beyond which the fisher class as a rule never look. It is curious to note that there was in most countries a commerce in fresh-water fish long before the food treasures of the sea were broken upon. This is particularly noticeable in our own country, and is vouched for by many authorities both at home and abroad. We can all imagine also, that in the prehistoric or very early ages, when the land was untilled and virgin, and the earth was undrained, there were sources for the supply of fresh-water fish that do not now exist in consequence of the enhanced value of land. At the period to which I have been alluding there was a much greater water surface than there is now—rivers were broader and deeper, and so also were our lakes and marshes. In those early days, although not so early as the remote uncultivated age of which I have spoken, there were great inland stews populous with fish, especially in connection with monasteries and other religious houses, many examples of which, in their remains, are still to be seen in England or on the Continent. In fact, fish commerce, in despite of many curious industries connected with the productiveness of the fisheries, was not really developed till a few years ago, when the railway system of carriage began. Even up to the time of George Stephenson commerce in fish was generally speaking a purely local business, except in so far as the fishwives could extend the trade by carrying the contents of their husbands’ boats away inland, in order, as in the still more primitive times, to barter the fish for other produce. The fishermen of Comacchio, for instance, still cure their eels, because they have not the means of sending them so rapidly into the interior of Italy as would admit of their being eaten fresh. Scotch salmon in the beginning of the present century was nearly all kippered or cured as soon as caught, because the demand for the fresh fish was only local, and therefore limited. With the discovery that salmon by being packed in ice could be kept a long time fresh, the trade began to extend and the price to rise. This discovery, which exercised a very