36 
to the deeper water. Of all these migratory fishes we have thus no regular 
stock; it must now and then be renewed from without. 
This survey contains, in rough outlines, the main results of these last 
years' biological investigations. Perhaps, in future, some alteration will be 
made in the grouping of the fishes, and all our other species of fishes of 
less immediate economical importance must be fitted into it, as the investigations 
proceed; but the results we have already gained concern the fishery-legislation 
so deeply that I have been unwilling to wait any longer with the publication 
of them. It is evident, that it is particularly with respect to the stationary 
fishes that something may be done, within the Danish sea-district, by means 
of legislation. When, therefore, the present law prohibits the buying and 
selling of cod and whitings under 8 inches in length, this must be considered 
less appropriate, already from this reason; though, of course, it will always 
be expedient to spare the fry of cod as well as of whitings, and not to 
catch them in multitudes for manure or similar purposes. 
Of the stationary fishes it is before all the flat-fishes that need protection; 
but I have discussed these elsewhere, and therefore I shall not here enter 
more closely into this matter. That the present law protects the dab is less 
necessary, among other reasons, on account of its slight value to the trade; 
but the sole ought to be included among the protected fishes. It is not 
possible, however, for Denmark alone to make great progress in these mat- 
ters.. I am here quite of the same opinion as Captain Drechsel, the Danish 
commissioner of fisheries, who at the Swedish Fisheries Conference at Stock- 
holm, 1897, said "that the protection of the inshore fisheries will not always 
answer the purpose, because the propagation of the fish and the hatching 
of the eggs most frequently occur outside the inshore waters, just at also 
the great fishery which is of any importance with respect to over-fishing, 
is carried on at sea. Another thing is that the inshore waters, at any 
rate certain parts of them, to a great extent seem to be the dwelling-places of 
the tender fry of flat-fishes, and that it is necessary, therefore, by certain 
regulations to protect it in these waters. 
The investigations in recent times seem thus, particularly, to claim 
protective regulations for the open sea fisheries, consequently by international 
legislation.” — — — 
What Denmark alone can do is, therefore, only to prevent the very 
worst destruction of the fry of the flat-fishes in the open seas, and to protect 
by law the species of fishes that particularly live in the enclosed fjords or 
within the Danish territorial waters, wn as far as they are in need of protection. 
The species of animals which may here come under consideration are not 
many: in general, indeed, only, €els, eel-pouts, prawns and oysters, plaice im 
the Limfjord and elsewhere, flounders, as also trout and salmon, and perhaps 
the brackish water fishes south of Zealand. 
