OYSTER FISHERY LEGISLATION. 1005 



of course possible that many localities much more profit- 

 able than any of those known may exist. When more is 

 understood of the migration of fishes, it is possible that bad 

 seasons may be entirely prevented by learning how to 

 follow the fish systematically from place to place. Shoal- 

 fish are already followed round the coast, but our whole 



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system of fishing may be said to consist more in passively 

 waiting for fish on their presumed grounds than in actively 

 hunting them down. 



A distinction may be drawn between spawning grounds 

 and spawning beds. The former would include all those 

 vast and indefinable spaces where fish instinctively breed, 

 and the latter those limited portions of the sea which have 

 been artificially established for fish propagation. Examples 

 of spawning grounds would be the districts between Egmont 

 in Holland and the entrance to the Cattegat, where it is 

 believed soles breed ; the district between Specton Cliffs 

 and Robin Hood's Bay off Yorkshire ; and the rocky pits 

 scattered through the North and other Seas surrounding 

 the United Kingdom. 



Spawning beds may be exemplified by the small por- 

 tions of districts near the coast or in estuaries which, under 

 the Third Part of the Sea Fisheries Act of 1868, or by other 

 enactments, may be allotted by the Board of Trade to 

 private individuals, and which are principally devoted to 

 the rearing of oysters. 



Intermediate between spawning grounds and spawning 

 beds are a third class of spawning spaces, which are near 

 the shore or partially enclosed by headlands, but which are 

 not artificially managed. Swansea Bay and numerous 

 other bays in which fish spawn, but which legislation is 

 almost powerless to directly protect, are instances of this 



