OUR FISHERIES 55 



human agency, for the very good reason that for a part of the 

 year they swim far from our coasts and out of our ken, and no 

 form of net yet constructed seems to encounter them on the 

 grounds ordinarily worked. The ocean is wide, and not even 

 the increased facilities for steam-carriage and ice-packing will 

 be able to keep up with extended winter migration on the part 

 of the fish. On the other hand, we shall also find a number 

 of more or less stationary flat-fish, such as the sole and 

 plaice, which are very severely menaced by the fishermen, 

 since at no period of their career are they exempt from toll 

 being levied on their numbers by one form or other of 

 net commonly in use. The writer had the honour of giving 

 evidence before Mr. Marjoribanks's Committee in 1893, when 

 his object was to bring evidence from Dr. Heincke, of 

 Heligoland, proving Germany's aloofness from international 

 restrictive measures until the German fisheries had developed 

 considerably beyond the position which they then held. Again 

 in 1 901 he gave evidence before Sir Herbert Maxwell's Com- 

 mittee on Ichthyological Research, and on that occasion it 

 was his endeavour to illustrate, by evidence from every port 

 between Brixham and St. Ives, personally collected during the 

 previous summer, the immediate need of a centralisation of 

 authority, and the manner in which the fishermen generally 

 distrust the local fishery district officials. It is quite useless to 

 mince matters in discussing these somewhat delicate difficulties 

 of local government. Those who serve on the fishery boards 

 are not always disinterested in the disposal of the local vote, 

 and the interest of the trawler will weigh more or less than 

 the interest of the seine-man or hooker to an extent that 

 would be quite impossible if a central department took over 

 direct control. Advocacy of such a Fishery Board cannot 

 reasonably be construed into any vote of want of confidence 

 in that overworked congeries of departments the Board of 

 Trade ; and as proof of the fallacy of such criticism of the 

 critics, it may be urged that most of these would be satisfied 



