The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-04 00:00:00

SHE LL-FISH FOR MANURE.

Every person who understands anything about
long line sea fishing, must know how vastly im-
portant mussels are for bait for the capture of food
fishes. Our readers will learn from our sea-fishery
columns of to-day, that these invaluable shell-fish
are wastefully—we had almost written wickedly—
destroyed, for manuring the land. Too much can-
not be said about this important subject, more es-
pecially if the advice and the telling will only induce
British fishermen, who are prone to trust too much
to luck and to chance for their bait, and in conse-
quence are very often unable to visit their fishing
grounds for the want of it—to follow the example
of the French fishermen, and instead of wasting and
destroying these mollusks, so indispensable to suc.
cessful fishing, to protect and cultivate them, and
in this manner insure an unfailing supply, by adopt-
ing the simpler plan of growing it. A dread of
being " musselled," makes ~iae British public shy of
devouring these wholesome bivalves, hence few are
required for food as compared with the con-
sumption of whelks and the
is common de-
scription of oysters. But it no exaggera-
tion to say that countless millions are annually
required and employed by our fishermen for bait.
From some of the natural mussel beds, 300 tons
of mussels are often gathered per week, and in one
small village in Scotland the fishermen require,
during the season, forbaiting their deep sea-lines for
cud and haddock fishing, over five millions of mus-
sels. No one will for a moment deny the commer-
cial importance of mussels in these days of dear
provisions ; not that these shellfish constitute in
themselves so important an article of food that their
dearth or dearness would prove any very material
inconvenience to anybody ; but their value lies in
the fact that no other kind of bait is found to be so
useful and effective as the mussel for the capture of
deep sea fishes fitted for human food. It is well
known that the supply of mussels hitherto derived
from our own sea coast is rapidly diminishing ;
year after year, spots, regarded as prolific mussel
banks yielding inexhaustible supplies, arc now
mere barren wastes by the constant and growing
demand for mussels. The old mussels are picked
off and carried away, and no persons appear to deem
it necessary to rear and provide growing stock to
replace them. What should we predict of a farmer
who went on and on killing his stock of breeding
animals, without ever bestowing a thought about
rearing others to fill the vacancies? Nevertheless,
this is precisely
.what our fishermen are doing in
regard to mussels, and, as a matter of course, they
are rapidly exhausting their bait-farms. The fol-
lowing statements will give our readers some idea
of the consumption of mussels, although at best it
is but a remote approximation to the actual num-
bers used for bait and consumed as food each year
in the United Kingdom :--A bushel measure will
contain, at a rough estimate, 2,000 mussels, and, in
London only, 50,400 bushels are consumed annu-
ally as food for the " " One million
quarts, sold in the streets by costermongers at one
penny per quart, would give a return of £4,000 per
annum." The consumption in Edinburgh and
Leith, Dr. Knapp tells us, is ten bushels per week ;
in all, 400 bushels per year. But even this is a mere
nothing when we consider the supply required for
deep-sea fishing. We will select Newhaven as one
example. There are four large deep-sea fishing
boats, which generally go out three times a week
thirty weeks in the year ; each boat carries a crew
of eight men, and eight fishing lines, each line 800
yards in length ; to bait each one of these long lines
1,200 mussels are required. Add to the four deep-
sea fishing boats sixteen lesser craft that go fishing
every day, wind and weather permitting (Sundays
excepted), for the annual supply of which 3,456,000
mussels are needed for baiting the lines, and the
number of these shell fish consumed each year in
Newhaven will be seen to be something enormous.
Quite as many, if not more, are used at Mussel-
burgh, Buckhaven, Elie, Anstruther, and elsewhere
in Scotland. Fishermen, we confidently hope, will
by and by learn to act like reasonable persons, and,
profiting by the good example set them by the in-
dustrious mussel farmers of Aiguillon, grow their
own bait. If warnings are of no avail, and it seems
there are no laws by which the pilferers of the mus-
sel beds can be brought to book, the fishermen will
have themselves to blame for the utter extinction
of the mussel. Only a fortnight has passed away
since we had to record a terrible destruction
of young whiting by the Thames fishermen. Thou-
sands of bushels were caught in a few weeks in the
Thames, and sold to the farmers at the rate of six-
pence per bushel, to be employed as manure. Each
fish probably would have been worth twopence if it
had been allowed to reach maturity. Sprats, which
the consumer has to pay a penny a pound for, have
been within the last fortnight sold to manure the
land at a few pence per bushel ; and in the face of
this waste we know that people are actually perish-
ing for the sheer want of food at our very door-
steps ; and then as if all this were not waste enough,
we discover now that mussels, upon which we have
in a great measure to depend for our supply of cod
and haddock, are actually carted of the " natural
scalps" at the rate of hundreds of tons per week,
simply to enrich land that could be better fertilised
with some other material. Surely it is high time
that proper laws were made, and competent inspec-
tors appointed, to put a stop to this abominable
waste of shell and food fish. The time will surely
come, if this destruction and waste are allowed to go
on unchecked, when sea and shell fish will be only
things we shall remember and regret.—Land and
}Vater.

A RACING STABLE PARTNERSHIP.—The Civil
Tribunal of the Seine has just been called on to decide a
dispute between the partners of the racing stable repre-
sented by the assumed named of Major Fridolin. The
association consists of M. Charles Laffitte, Baron Niviere,
and Khalil Boy. The last-named has already formed a
demand before the Tribunal of Commerce for a dissolution
of the partnership, and the application is now awaiting a
decision ; the other partners in the mean time wished to
proceed with the annual weeding out of the stable, and
had advertised a sale to take place on the 11th of
December. That course was opposed by Khalil Bay,
who maintained that the sale of such horses as Gon-
tran (a French Derby winner) was an act of aliena-
tion of a part of the capital of the association, and would
diminish his share in the division of property when a
general sale would take place on the 'dissolution of the
partnership. He consequently obtained on the 10th of
December a judge's order, provisionally suspending any
disposal of horses until the hearing of the present ease.
The counsel of MM. Laffitte and Niviere, with the object
of showing that the sale advertised was necessary for the
good management of the general property in the interest
of all the partners, read letters from M. Delarnarre and M.
Lupin, owners of largo racing studs, to show that it was
usual at the end of each year to rid the stables of worth-
less animals. The Tribunal, however, considered that the
sale would be an act of alienation, and maintained the
prohibition.