But allowing the French people to cultivate to the very utmost—as they especially do as regards the oyster—it is impossible they can ever exceed, either in productive power or money value, the fisheries of our own coasts. If, without the trouble of taking a long journey, we desire to witness the results of the British fisheries, we have only to repair to Billingsgate to find this particular industry brought to a focus. At that piscatorial bourse we can see in the early morning the produce of our most distant seas brought to our greatest seat of population, sure of finding a ready and a profitable market. The aldermanic turbot, the tempting sole, the gigantic codfish, the valuable salmon, the cheap sprat, and the universal herring, are all to be found during their different seasons in great plenty at Billingsgate; and in the lower depths of the market buildings countless quantities of shell-fish of all kinds, stored in immense tubs, may be seen; while away in the adjacent lanes there are to be found gigantic boilers erected for the purpose of crab and lobster boiling. Some of the shops in the neighbourhood have always on hand large stocks of all kinds of dried fish, which are carried away in great waggons to the railway stations for country distribution. About four o’clock on a summer morning this grand piscatorial mart may be seen in its full excitement—the auctioneers bawling, the porters rushing madly about, the hawkers also rushing madly about seeking persons to join them in buying a lot, and so to divide their speculations; and all over is sprinkled the dripping sea-water, and all around we feel that “ancient and fish-like smell” which is the concomitant of such a place. No statistics of a reliable kind are published as to the total annual value of the British fisheries. An annual account of the Scottish herring-fishery is taken by commissioners and officers appointed for that purpose; which, along with a yearly report of the Irish fisheries, is the only reliable annual document on the subject that we possess, and the latest official report of the commissioners will be found analysed in another part of this volume. For any statistics of our white-fish fisheries we are compelled to resort to second-hand sources of information; and, as is likely enough in the circumstances, we do not, after all, get our curiosity properly gratified on these important topics—the progress and produce of the British fisheries. As a proof of the difficulty of obtaining reliable statistics of our sea-harvest, I am compelled to have recourse to the quantities of all kinds of fish carried by the various railways as an indication of what we are doing on the waters. Large quantities of sea produce are still, however, carried by water. The supplies brought inland by the various railways are as follow:—