202 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



Details of these are abundantly furnished, relating to the extermination 

 or decadence of numerous forms with a consequent dominance of many 

 others, not a few of which have become pests through the removal of 

 the natural checks to an increase which otherwise would have been 

 regulated by the "balance of nature." All these and many other 

 problems of interest to the farmer and sportsman as well as to the 

 naturalist, are dealt with in an exhaustive and engaging fashion in this 

 important contribution to our knowledge of faunal evolution. The 

 volume contains a full index, is embellished with ninety-one illustrations, 

 and a series of maps delineating in a remarkably graphic manner the 

 distribution, past and present, of some of the more interesting species 

 and other subjects. W. E. C. 



The Sea Fisheries. By Dr J. Travis Jenkins, Barrister-at-Law. 

 Constable & Co., 1920. Pp. xxxi. + 299. Price 24s. net. 



Recent important books on Sea Fisheries have usually been written 

 by zoologists, such as Dr Wemyss Fulton, Professor Meek, and Dr J. 

 Johnstone, but the present work is the production of a lawyer, who, 

 however, as Superintendent for fifteen years of the Lancashire and 

 Western Sea Fisheries Committee, and as explorer of the Indian seas, 

 has had much and varied experience. 



The work contains a large amount of information about the British 

 Fisheries,, and the chapters on the methods of fishing and on the 

 trawling-grounds in the North Sea and elsewhere are especially 

 interesting, accompanied as they are by a map. Moreover, trawling 

 for herring by the ordinary steam trawler in daylight is described, and 

 a summary of the rise of the herring fisheries in Britain is also given, 

 the same fishing-grounds and the same seasons persisting to-day as in 

 the olden time. The author's account of the Bounty System is both full 

 and instructive. In dealing with the herring fisheries he refers to those 

 of Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, and Germany, as well as those 

 of Britain. 



In referring to trawling he considers that it is only stern necessity 

 which compels our trawlers to undertake long voyages to the White Sea 

 and other distant grounds, and he is seemingly unaware that in the 

 olden time long voyages for the capture of fishes were not unknown. 



In fishery administration he is not inclined to centralisation, the 

 view of Lord Dalhousie in 1885, which has been mentioned several 

 times since. He favours instead a strong Board in each division of the 

 country, viz., in England, Scotland, and Ireland. 



The author is to be congratulated on having brought together a 

 large amount of useful information concerning the sea fisheries of 

 Britain, and much concerning their administration, and if he has not 

 grasped the evidences of stability afforded by the careful study of the 

 question as a whole, he has done much to aid the general inquirer in 

 attaining a reliable knowledge of the subject, especially as regards the 

 fisheries of England and Wales. W. C. M. 



