INTRODUCTORY. 33 



and Alcyoniiim digitatum by naturalists. It is found on all 

 parts of the coast, and it is rarely that a trawl is hauled 

 up without some of this substance being among the 

 contents of the net. The trawlers know very well that 

 the variety of things called spawn by other fishermen 

 are not so really ; they cannot generally tell you what 

 they are, and that is not very surprising ; but we never 

 met with a trawler who thought hermit crabs were 

 young lobsters, as was distinctl}^ stated by one of the 

 witnesses before the Royal Commissioners at Galway, 

 or who had any doubt about the spawn of the cuttle-fish. 

 We have ourselves been with the trawlers on various 

 parts of the coast, and have boarded them unexpectedly 

 flir out in the North Sea, and, officially and privately, 

 have done our best to find fish spawn in the trawl ; but 

 we have never succeeded ; and the conclusion we arrived 

 at was that rough ground, on which the trawlers do not 

 and cannot work, was the situation in which fishes, as a 

 rule, deposited their spawn. This was, however, before 

 M. Sars had begun his observations ; and the negative 

 results of our examinations on the ground have received 

 a simple explanation by his inquiries at the surface. 



It appears then there is little reason to believe in the 

 possibility of destroying by any existing method of sea 

 fishing the deposited spawn of any of our important 

 edible fishes, with the exception of the herring ; and we 

 have no evidence that any injury is caused even in the 

 case of that fish, for in the few places in which it is 

 known that the spawn of the herring is deposited, 

 trawling is rarely carried on. The subject may be 

 looked at, however, from another point of view, and it 

 is one worthy of the consideration of those who believe 

 our fisheries are being ruined. We mean the literally 

 enormous quantity of spawn annually consumed by the 



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