54 SALT-WATER FISHES 



are held fast in this extraordinary fashion by the teeth being 

 embedded in the soft cotton mesh, and the fishermen, having 

 long known this habit, do not organise any special fishery with 

 small-meshed nets, although the fish commands a good price in 

 the hotels, because, they say, the fish catches itself and saves 

 them the trouble. 



We have not on our coasts any fish of such suicidal habits 

 as this inhabitant of the inland waters of Switzerland ; but, as 

 will be shown in the following pages, many of our food-fishes 

 have a most interesting life-history, and the fishermen have 

 not been backward in turning their more curious habits to 

 account. Thus, the construction and employment of the drift- 

 net for pilchards on the Cornish coast — which will be more 

 fully explained later — argues a very long and close acquaintance 

 with the singular habit of pilchards in congregating to feed 

 about sunset, and the principle of the fine mesh slipping inside 

 the gill-cover and thus holding the fish prisoner is extremely 

 sound. The first obvious reason, then, for including the 

 present chapter as a legitimate departure from the immediate 

 subject of the volume is that the reader may have an intelligent 

 understanding of the various engines of destruction — the trawl 

 and trammel and the rest, mentioned hereafter. The second, not 

 less important, reason is that he may also, if desired, be in a 

 position to grasp the significance of some of the problems of 

 fishery legislation which from time to time crop up in the 

 Parliamentary programme, and which are, apart from the more 

 academic enthusiasm of the laboratory biologist, the chief end 

 and aim of marine biological investigation. The obsolete 

 optimism of the remark already quoted from Yarrell has 

 increasingly troubled those who take an interest in the safe- 

 guarding of great industries and, more particularly, of great 

 sources of national food supply. As we shall see in the later 

 chapters of this book, there are a number of important round 

 migratory fish, such as the cod and mackerel, which cannot in 

 all probability be exhausted, or even seriously lessened, by 



