Although, so far as we are concerned, the record of practical achievements concerning the industrial utilization of fish-waste is slender, owing to the few firms having been persuaded to embrace this phase of trading, it is consoling to learn that we possess what may be described as the leading authorities competent to deal with this issue in all its varying aspects, and to be equipped with the best approved facilities for conducting this work along the latest and most promising lines. There is one firm in particular which has built up a unique reputation in this direction, having been responsible for the design and construction, as well as installation, of the largest fish-waste reclamation plants in operation throughout the world. Some of these equipments are most elaborate in character, and their very dimensions, activity, scale of operations and prosperity, serve to demonstrate, in the most convincing manner, the enormous wealth capable of being won from fish scrap when the task is conducted along the lines advanced by scientific development. The British firm in question, to whose apparatus I have devoted extensive description in a previous chapter, has been responsible for the complete installations forming part and parcel of the huge canneries scattered along the western seaboard of the North American continent. It somewhat redeems our own short-sightedness and lack of enterprise to know that we have a firm in our midst which has achieved many distinct triumphs in the great issue of waste reclamation. It retains an imposing staff of highly-trained chemists who have become specialists in this privileged province, and they have devoted especial attention to the exploitation of fish-scrap in the anticipation that this may yet develop into a pretentious British industry. The presiding genius of this organization has also associated himself intimately with the problem from the severely scientific side, as well as becoming thoroughly familiarized with the latest methods as practised in Germany, Scandinavia, and other countries in order to reap full advantage from the lessons which they are able to extend in point of equipment and practice. In the opinion of this active-minded and enterprising authority we have nothing to learn from the foreigner either in point of processes, plant, or efficiency. We merely lack the necessary imagination, initiative, and commercial acumen to be able to reap the full financial and trading harvest to be gathered from the exploitation of fish-scrap. While we are apathetic and backward in this connection our Dominions are alert and astute. We need only to turn to the extensive installation recently laid down in Australia--a model of its type--and which was completed by the firm in question, to grasp what can be accomplished in this peculiar field.