RECENT REPORTS OF FISHERY AUTHORITIES. 205 



with reasonable probability, from the fry liberated from the hatchery. 

 We cannot, however, admit the correctness of certain calculations con- 

 tained in the official general statement of this Report. These are, tliat 

 if one in a hundred of the fry distributed from the hatchery survived, 

 and were worth sixpence each, the resulting value to the fisheries 

 would be about £18,000, and that it would recj^uire the survival of 

 only one in a thousand, in value one penny each, to cover the expenses 

 of the work. Fish in the sea have clearly no value, and we cannot 

 hope to catch all of them. It is difficult to say whether a quarter, 

 a half, three-quarters, or what proportion would be caught; but even 

 when they were caught and sold, their value could not be all applied to 

 defray the cost of hatching, because the greater part of it, as usual, 

 would go to defray the cost of catching and marketing. Such calcu- 

 lations would only be applicable to fish that were reared entirely in 

 confinement, like chickens or pigs. 



The importance of the working of a marine hatchery at the 

 present time, and on the comparatively small scale of that at 

 Dunbar, may be reasonably held to be, not in the immediate utili- 

 tarian result to be derived from it, but in its value as a sufficiently 

 extensive experiment in the open. We have reached a certain 

 point in laboratory research and experimentation. We have discovered 

 enough concerning the life-histories of food fishes, and their place 

 in nature, to obtain glimpses of the possibility of a more scientific 

 and more profitable exploitation of the products of the sea than 

 that w^hich is now practised. To convert these glimpses into 

 comprehensive perception, we require more investigation and experi- 

 mentation under the open sky, and on a scale commensurate with the 

 extent of the regions to be exploited. Thus the managers of a 

 hatchery ought not be content with proclaiming the millions of fry they 

 have liberated, but should ascertain what ratio these numbers bear 

 to the number of fry naturally present in the region where they are 

 placed, and should make every endeavour to trace their future history. 

 In this Eeport Ur, Fulton gives the result of some very valuable 

 experiments he has made, as to the effect of the currents on the east 

 coast of Scotland, on bottles floating level with the surface. These results 

 show that buoyant objects at the surface are carried southward and east- 

 ward to the neighbouring shore. One or two of these bottles were 

 found ultimately on the German coast, near Heligoland. The fry from 

 the hatchery were liberated at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, and 

 in St. Andrew's Bay, and according to the direction of tlie drift, 

 ascertained by the experiments just mentioned, the survivors should be 

 found chiefly on the southern shores of the Firth, and further south-east 

 towards Berwick. It will probably turn out, therefore, that the 



