SOME NEW BOOKS 



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and be able to give some solid grounds for the faith that is in them — a faith in 

 the (ultimate) beneficial effect of closure against trawling, which has led them 

 to extend their experiment from the Firth of Forth and St. Andrews Bay to 

 the Clyde sea area, and finally to the vast extent of the Moray Firth. 



And it is not difficult to see what an effective reply to the present book 

 might consist in. Professor M 'In tosh alludes in his preface to the 108 tables 

 compiled from the Board's trawling statistics, and he gives us some thirty of 

 these as supporting his case ; but these, and the statements as to the different 

 fish, strike the ordinary scientific reader as being meagre — the numbers dealt 

 with are comparatively small, the occasions are few, and the areas traversed are 

 not extensive. Moreover, Professor M'Intosh makes so much of the unsuitability 

 of the Garland for the work, the smallness of her trawl, and the uncertainty of 

 such results (p. 114, etc.), that one rather wonders that he was willing to trust 

 any superstructure of argument and conclusion upon such slender and broken 

 reeds. The deceptive nature of insufficient statistics is proverbial. We do not 

 believe that the Garland's statistics are sufficient, as yet, to prove anything — 

 except perhaps what Professor M'Intosh so frequently points out, the uncertainty 

 of all such operations. Our critic shows that the results in the Board's first 

 quinquennial period cannot fairly be compared with those in the second, since 

 they were obtained under different conditions. We doubt whether there is a 

 sufficiently extensive body of figures in any period to compare with any other 

 with the view of arriving at such conclusions as those of the Board on the one 

 hand or those of its critic on the other. It is probably premature to expect any 

 important conclusions yet. It may be thought that ten to fifteen years is a 

 sufficiently lengthy period of observation to justify a belief that results un vitiated 

 by " accidental " and seasonal variations might have been attained. And that 

 would have been the case if we had had before us all the results of the hauls 

 of all the commercial trawlers working round our coasts during that period. 

 [Why do not the Board of Trade in England and the Fishery Board in Scotland 

 devise a mechanism for obtaining these most important returns ?] But what 

 can we expect from the occasional isolated scrapes (for they are little more than 

 that) of a steam-yacht with a small trawl 1 There is one thing— amongst many 

 — that Professor M'Intosh has made clear in this book, and that is, if the 

 Fishery Board continue the experimental closure of sea areas for some years 

 scientific men will expect them to do their best to settle these disputed questions 

 by adopting a more vigorous and effective policy, so as to collect a body of 

 statistics which will be sufficient and unimpeachable. 



It is to be regretted that Prof. M'Intosh has rearranged the statistics 

 according to his own ideas in a method which will probably not be accepted by 

 the Board ; and we fear that in some cases errors have crept in during copying 

 and rearrangement which will make it necessaiy to have the figures carefully 

 examined and verified before conclusions drawn from them can be trusted. We 

 would ask Prof. M'Intosh whether the table on p. 196 does not contain an error 

 of about 20,000 cwt. of cod in one year's work of the liners of the Moray Firth. 

 We believe there are other errors in the same table. We have not had time to 

 compare all the others with the original statistics, but it is evident that the 

 tables must be received and used with caution. 



The " Introduction " to the book gives a general statement of facts which, 

 Prof. M'Intosh believes, "point to the conclusion that, with some exceptions, 

 the fauna of the open sea, from its nature and environment, would appear to a 

 large extent to be independent of man's influence." Well, that somewhat 

 guarded statement may be difficult to contradict, and yet it gives an impression 

 which we believe to be incorrect. So much depends upon what the " some 

 exceptions " are, and upon what is meant by " open sea," " would appear," and 

 " to a large extent." If the open sea means, for example, the North Atlantic, 

 then we agree ; but our fisheries are not there, and no one proposes to interfere 

 with " Nature " in that wide expanse. 



