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The Harvest of the Sea: Including Sketches of Fisheries & Fisher Folk
The Harvest of the Sea Including Sketches of Fisheries Fisher Folk Author:James Glass Bertram Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EAKLT FISH COMMEKCE. 29 from the want of investigation, were but little understood, have been, with those additions which under such circumstances always accu... more »mulate, handed down to the present day, so that even now we are carrying on some of our fisheries on altogether false assumptions, 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 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, as 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, may be seen in England and 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 fishwives c...« less