The Fish Industries Gazette, as I say, was one of several in its field, in friendly rivalry with The Oyster Trade and Fisherman and The Pacific Fisheries.  It comprized two departments:  the fresh fish and oyster department, and myself.  I was, as an editorial announcement said at the beginning of my tenure of office, a “reorganisation of our salt, smoked, and pickled fish department.”  The delectable, mellow spirit of the country paper, so removed from the crash and whirr of metropolitan journalism, rested in this, too, that upon the Gazette I did practically everything on the paper except the linotyping.  Reporter, editorial writer, exchange editor, make-up man, proof-reader, correspondent, advertisement solicitor, was I.

As exchange editor, did I read all the papers in the English language in eager search of fish news.  And while you are about the matter, just find me a finer bit of literary style evoking the romance of the vast wastes of the moving sea, in Stevenson, Defoe, anywhere you please, than such a news item as this:  “Capt.  Ezra Pound, of the bark Elnora, of Salem, Mass., spoke a lonely vessel in latitude this and longitude that, September 8.  She proved to be the whaler Wanderer, and her captain said that she had been nine months at sea, that all on board were well, and that he had stocked so many barrels of whale oil.”

As exchange editor was it my business to peruse reports from Eastport, Maine, to the effect that one of the worst storms in recent years had destroyed large numbers of the sardine weirs there.  To seek fish recipes, of such savoury sound as those for “broiled redsnapper,” “shrimps bordelaise,” and “baked fish croquettes.”  To follow fishing conditions in the North Sea occasioned by the Great War.  To hunt down jokes of piscatory humour.  “The man who drinks like a fish does not take kindly to water.—­Exchange.”  To find other “fillers” in the consular reports and elsewhere:  “Fish culture in India,” “1800 Miles in a Dory,” “Chinese Carp for the Philippines,” “Americans as Fish Eaters.”  And, to use a favourite term of trade papers, “etc., etc.”  Then to “paste up” the winnowed fruits of this beguiling research.

As editorial writer, to discuss the report of the commission recently sent by congress to the Pribilof Islands, Alaska, to report on the condition of our national herd of fur seals; to discuss the official interpretation here of the Government ruling on what constitutes “boneless” codfish; to consider the campaign in Canada to promote there a more popular consumption of fish, and to brightly remark apropos of this that “a fish a day keeps the doctor away”; to review the current issue of The Journal of the Fisheries Society of Japan, containing leading articles on “Are Fishing Motor Boats Able to Encourage in Our Country” and “Fisherman the Late Mr. H. Yamaguchi Well Known”; to combat the prejudice against dogfish as food, a prejudice