INTRODUCTORY. 35 



time were permitted to deposit their ova, we should 

 have an immense and obvious increase in the number 

 of fisli in following years ; but such a supposition would 

 be based on the idea that the milhons now caught form 

 a large proportion of the herrings on our coasts. There 

 is no reason to believe, however, that they make up 

 more than a very small percentage of the hosts in our 

 seas. Those which are caught by drift-nets, which is 

 the general method employed, may be said really to be 

 taken by chance; tliey happen to come where the nets 

 are floating, and in trying to pass through them they 

 become meshed. But, as any fisherman will acknow- 

 ledge, the fishery is a pure lottery, depending not only 

 on the number of fish where he may have shot his nets, 

 but also on whether or not the fish will rise far enough 

 to come within their reach. Again, the extent of net- 

 ting used in the herring fishery, immense as it appears 

 to be when the number of square yards is calculated or 

 estimated, is utterly insignificant when we consider 

 what the superficial area of the sea occupied by it on 

 any one night is to that in which the herrings are 

 entirely unobstructed, in their movements, even if we 

 suppose them all to be within a moderate distance of 

 the land. Reasonable calculations have been made of 

 the number of herrings that no doubt are consumed 

 during the season by the gannets at the island of 

 St. Kilda alone — a number startling to those persons 

 who believe our fishermen get the largest share of the 

 fish in the sea ; and Professor Huxley repeated before 

 the Parliamentary Committee in 1867, the result of an 

 investigation he made while at work on the Scotch 

 Herring Commission a few years previously, to the 

 effect that the number of herrings it might be expected 

 would have been consumed by the cod and ling known 



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