FISH GUANO.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 276, 27 June 1888, Page 4

FISH GUANO.

In some parks of New Zealand fish din be caught in largo quantities. By stretching nets across the mouths of small estuaries often much more fish is caught by settlors than can be used, and much is wasted. Now this refuse fish can be converted into the most valuable fertiliser, after been properly prepared. Writing in an English farming paper, a correspondent draws attention to the great was to that goes on in the English fisheries, by the non-utilisation of refuse fish, and advocates tho catching in largo quantities of fish that have little or no valuo as human food, and converting thorn into fish guano. He refers to the hundreds of millions sterling that England has paid to Pom for fish guano. Tie goes on to ?ay :—: — "The fish should bo macerated, subjected to slow heat and pressure that extracts the oil ; the residuum pressed into a nake. Perroc's furnaco Avill burn rubbish that costs 2s. per ton, or give out heat at ono-sevonth the cost of any existing furnace. Our seas at times are full of all kinds of fish that prey upon our edible fish, and the fish of the sea cannot by any means of man bo sonsibly diminished. The late Commander Thomas Curti> stated that 50,000 tons of dogfish could be caught between Lynn and Lowe stoft in one season. Most of our sands are covered with five-fingers, that prey upon oysters. The registered fishermen and boys

of bho United Kingdom are 339,614, and 125,614 of tonnage. Now, those men and boys 1 look upon as our future navnl rosorvc ; wo have lost our line body of collier sailors — thoy aro almost extinct. It capitalists and landed proprietors would study thoit own interests, if they would consult the fiivt chemists of the day, and ascertain how this wealth that surrounds our coast in to be converted into English fish guano in a cheap and portable form, L need not state what blessings would follow in strengthening our maritime population, (hiding employment for many, and onriching ourselves at home. ' Might there not be an opening hero for colonial enlerpiino in something of this ort ?