FOOD QUESTION
319
conditions, with a much greater fecundity than freshwater
shes and 'requiring no assistance
,
in maintaining the
numbers, at least of the young.
.
The magnitude of the world’s
can hardly
be stated with any degree of accuracy. As the shing is
-
prosecuted almost entirelyin the coastal plateau down to
100 fathoms, the most extensive;sherie3 are in the northern
hemisphere With its greater Coast-line = Here the
value of: the; catches. landed, including those of_
Canada, andthe United States, but excluding other .Asiaticcountries and thecountries bordering on the Mediterranean,
has amounted during recent years to over-£100,oo‘o,ooo.
.
The: Anierican— authors have estimated the annual value Of -
the whole World’s sheries at over £zoo,ooo;ooo. If we
take any gure in between we obtain a suiciently dear
idea of the value of the sheries to the shermen.
Thé
value of the sh when it comes to the consumer, whether
fresh, pickled, or preserved, is of course about three times
as much… Thecapital'erhployed in reapingthis‘ harvest—«
gear,
beimagined;
'
eng-aged
die‘i‘Sgr6âtlÿ
in the
countries ac“Cofding to the nature “of the sh—
and the? -_,Size of,;the 'bôats; Great Britain, Which has
in the ofÏshorïe shing'and cot—ributesa very large
_
.
pr0portiori to the-above sum, has only…about So,-006 sher—
,
men; the
has:_’about=r$o,oob and “c0ntribùteS
;"
somewhat less; but Japan“, with ”its
has]
1,4oo,ooo regular shermen andab0ut half as“ many 'again
occasionally employed.
,
'
=,
—
With regard» to the value of_ the sheries, it should
perhaps be stated thatthe price of sh isvery much greater
n0w than formerly;_ Thus in England the average
—of-all Shlanded in1913 wasabout 123. per huhdredweight,
[
in 1923
it was twice as. much.
The probability. is-thàt it.
'
will remain about-the:
since the; costs of: shing.
to a;greaterexteht;
«pf'
-.;
It -iS—,
difcult to state {the total
‘?f
—
sh lanfdedf
In_;1920
the North .
"