42 DEEP-SEA FISHING. 



edible fishes without being able to find one which we 

 could say witli certainty spawns only inshore. We 

 presume that no one who has given the slightest con- 

 sideration to the subject will contend that the millions 

 of plaice annually caught in the neighbourhood of the 

 Doggerbank must be the produce of spawn shed by 

 those fish which frequent our sandy bays. The plaice 

 is a ubiquitous species, and we have no evidence wliat- 

 ever that it does not spawn in its usual haunts, wherever 

 they may be, inshore or in deep water. Tlie fact that 

 plaice, soles, and many other kinds of fish are caught 

 near the land when they are full of roe shows nothing 

 more than that those individual fishes would probably 

 have spawned in that neighbourhood ; but the trawlers 

 catch the same kind of fish in precisely the same condi- 

 tion far out at sea, and we may therefore as reasonably 

 conclude that the latter would have shed their spawn 

 i]i deep water. If it were the rule for fishes in general 

 to spawn inshore, the immense multitudes of each 

 kind which in their season would collect there for 

 that purpose could hardly escape the notice of the 

 fishermen ; but we do not hear of very extraordinary 

 numbers being observed at that time more than at any 

 other. 



It may be said, however, that the number of very 

 young fish, particularly flat-fish, found in shallow sandy 

 bays, is a strong argument in fixvour of inshore spawn- 

 ing. There is no doubt whatever that more very small 

 flat-fish are caught in such situations than in deep water; 

 but independently of the question of comparative num- 

 bers existing in the different localities, it is as well to 

 remember that the yoimg fry in the sandy bays are 

 caught by shrimp-nets and small-meslied trawls wliicli 

 are never used in deci) water, and ihat tlie fish so taken 



