72 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
satisfactorily conserve and fully develop the great resources of the deep 
until we have adequate knowledge of the biological content of its more 
important and accessible areas. 
As was insisted upon and demonstrated in a masterly address 
delivered by Professor Ramsay Wright before the Royal Society in 1901,1 
the water is as productive acre for acre as the land, indeed more so, and 
until a satisfactory knowledge of the living forms floating, as the great 
Roman orator said, at the sea’s surface, or embosomed in its depths, or 
clinging to its shallow shores, we shall, so far, be incapacitated from 
controlling and increasing the larger forms, the valuable comestible 
fishes upon which the fishing industries depend. These fishes, whose 
pursuit gives employment to the great army of Canadian fishermen, 
furnish a supply of esteemed food to our own and distant populations, 
and bring wealth to our people, through the many complex commercial 
enterprises included under the term “ fisheries.” 
I cannot refrain from quoting a pregnant paragraph from the 
Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Sea 
Fisheries of the United Kingdom, 1863, in which it is justifiably 
claimed that :— 
“The produce of the sea around the coasts bears a far higher pro- 
portion to that of the land than is generally imagined. The most 
frequented fishing-grounds are much more prolific of food than the same 
extent of the richest land. Once in the year an acre of good land, 
carefully tilled, produces a ton of corn, or two or three ewt. of meat 
or cheese. ‘The same area at the bottom of the sea, on the best fishing 
grounds, yields a greater weight of food to the persevering fisherman 
every week in the year. Five vessels, belonging to the same owner, in 
a single night’s fishing, brought in 17 tons weight of fish—an amount 
of wholesome food equal in weight to that of 50 cattle or 300 sheep. 
The ground which these vessels covered during the night’s fishing could 
not have exceeded an area of 50 acres.” 
“When we consider the amount of care that has been bestowed on 
the improvement of agriculture, the national societies which are 
established for promoting it, and the scientific knowledge and engineer- 
ing skill which have been enlisted in its aid, it seems strange that the 
sea-fisheries have hitherto attracted so little of the public attention. 
There are few means of enterprise that present better chances of profit 
than our sea-fisheries, and no object of greater utility could be named 
than the development of enterprise, skill, and mechanical ingenuity in 
connection with the fishing industries.” 

1**Some Problems of Marine Biology.” 
