Fishes good for food--these are and have been through ages by far the most important to man. Other kinds may be dangerous or interesting. But without the “Food-fishes” of the Ocean the difficulties of feeding mankind would be largely increased. For they are always there. They come without exertion on our part. No sowing, no digging, no tending of the waters, is needed to bring forth the mighty harvest. Year after year, multitudes past imagination come into existence, and any number of them may be had for the trouble of taking. All that man did in the past was his level best, by reckless destruction, to kill the goose which lays the golden eggs, to exterminate the creatures which are to him of so incalculable a value. Of late years some steps have been taken in the other direction, some efforts have been made towards the preservation of fish and the culture of spawn. But much more remains to be done. The incessant use of line and net and trawl through centuries has thinned the multitudes of some species very greatly, and in the course of time they may even cease to exist. That the harm done thus far has not been far greater must be ascribed to the enormous numbers of each kind, and to the vastness of those ocean-regions, where they may at any time retreat beyond man’s reach. For this we have to be thankful. It would be an ill day for us, on which the chief food-fishes should fail. Herrings, for example. What would the poorer throngs of our large cities do, without that useful little cheap dish? The amount of herrings caught yearly around British shores almost exceeds belief. They appear often in mighty shoals, swimming closely packed throughout a mile or more, being devoured as they swim, to the tune of millions, and being captured by fishermen in masses. Yet year by year the supply goes on, apparently undiminished. One fisherman alone, at work near the French coast, reckoned that in the course of a single night he had taken over five hundred thousand herrings, half which he threw back into the sea. An unusual amount, of course. But what must be the sum-total captured in a year by the combined efforts of all fishermen? In a year, however, a herring produces somewhere about thirty thousand eggs. What, then, must be the sum-total of eggs produced by all herrings in the ocean? True, vast numbers of the eggs come to nothing; vast numbers serve as food for other creatures. Yet enormous supplies escape countless dangers, and succeed. Thus the poor man’s food is bountifully given, in an ever-recurring harvest. Among “Food-fishes” the “White” kinds are prominent, belonging mainly to two large families. One of these families includes Cod, Whiting, and Haddock. The other consists of Flat Fishes, such as Turbot, Halibut, Sole, Dab, Plaice. At the head of the first family stands the Cod, that most useful and abundant creature, found throughout the deeper waters of northern seas.