IV P R E F A C fi . 



lines of enquiry and operation, advantageously replaced 

 by expert specialists from 1907 and 1908. 



For it was soon found that while the local enquiry 

 readily yielded a mass of fairly obvious facts relative to 

 indigenous methods and conditions, yet that a far deeper 

 and more lengthy investigation was needed to yield 

 answers to the questions why such methods prevailed ; 

 what were the conditions, whether of nature or of society, 

 which limited or compelled these methods ; what 

 practical improvements in existing methods could be 

 devised and inculcated as sure and certain ; how such 

 improvements could be introduced and popularised ; 

 what developments, hitherto undreamed of, — piscicul- 

 tural, industrial, commercial, scientific, economic and 

 social — were both desirable and feasible. 



Nothing but such continuous industrial experiment 

 as put the investigator into the position of the fisherman 

 and curer, taught him the natural, economic, and social 

 difficulties of their business, and led him by superior 

 knowledge and power of research into the paths of 

 practical improvement, could be of real worth ; it is only 

 the intimate knowledge gained by continuous practice 

 under the conditions of the country that could produce 

 suggestions of permanent value. This will, in a measure, 

 be evident from the papers read as a series, which not 

 only display the changes in idea and method which have 

 characterized the work of the department but the mis- 

 takes which were necessarily made by inexpert enquirers 

 when investigating an industry of which the conditions 

 and limitations imposed by nature and by social and 

 economic history were absolutely untested. 



The papers are, except for the correction of a few 

 surface errors, printed as they were originally written ; 

 they are mostly extracts and not entire papers, since 



