like that against eels, in some quarters eyed askance as “calling cousins with the great sea-serpent,” as Juvenal says; to call attention to the doom of one of the most picturesque monuments in the story of fish, the passing of the pleasant and celebrated old Trafalgar Hotel at Greenwich, near London, scene of the famous Ministerial white-bait dinners of the days of Pitt; to make a jest on an exciting idea suggested by some medical man that some of the features of a Ritz-Carlton Hotel, that is, baths, be introduced into the fo’c’s’les of Grand Banks fishing vessels; to keep an eye on the activities of our Bureau of Fisheries; to hymn a praise to the monumental new Fish Pier at Boston; to glance at conditions at the premier fish market of the world, Billingsgate; to herald the fish display at the Canadian National Exhibition at Toronto, and, indeed, etc., and again etc.

As general editorial roustabout, to find each week a “leader,” a translation, say, from In Allgemeine Fishcherei-Zeitwung, or Economic Circular No. 10, “Mussels in the Tributaries of the Missouri,” or the last biennial report of the Superintendent of Fisheries of Wisconsin, or a scientific paper on “The Porpoise in Captivity” reprinted by permission of Zoologica, of the New York Zoological Society.  To find each week for reprint a poem appropriate in sentiment to the feeling of the paper.  One of the “Salt Water Ballads” would do, or John Masefield singing of “the whale’s way,” or “Down to the white dipping sails;” or Rupert Brooke:  “And in that heaven of all their wish.  There shall be no more land, say fish”; or a “weather rhyme” about “mackerel skies,” when “you’re sure to get a fishing day”; or something from the New York Sun about “the lobster pots of Maine”; or Oliver Herford, in the Century, “To a Goldfish”; or, best of all, an old song of fishing ways of other days.

And to compile from the New York Journal of Commerce better poetry than any of this, tables, beautiful tables of “imports into New York”:  “Oct. 15.—­From Bordeaux, 225 cs. cuttlefish bone; Copenhagen, 173 pkgs. fish; Liverpool, 969 bbls. herrings, 10 walrus hides, 2,000 bags salt; La Guayra, 6 cs. fish sounds; Belize, 9 bbls. sponges; Rotterdam, 7 pkgs. seaweed, 9,000 kegs herrings; Barcelona, 235 cs. sardines; Bocas Del Toro, 5 cs. turtle shells; Genoa, 3 boxes corals; Tampico, 2 pkgs. sponges; Halifax, 1 cs. seal skins, 35 bbls. cod liver oil, 215 cs. lobsters, 490 bbls. codfish; Akureyri, 4,150 bbls. salted herrings,” and much more.  Beautiful tables of “exports from New York”.  “To Australia” (cleared Sep. 1); “to Argentina;”—­Haiti, Jamaica, Guatemala, Scotland, Salvador, Santo Domingo, England, and to places many more.  And many other gorgeous tables, too, “Fishing vessels at New York,” for one, listing the “trips” brought into this port by the Stranger, the Sarah O’Neal, the Nourmahal, a farrago of charming sounds, and a valuable tale of facts.