18 



The red spots mark tlie eel-trap fishery. On some very special charts the 

 number of the traps was first marked down, very accurately, with a 

 red dot for eacli; in this way au excellent view of their situation and 

 numbers was obtained. As these charts were too large and expensive 

 to be priuted, we preferred, however, to draw the whole chart on a 

 smaller scale, and let the red colour quite cover an area eorresponding 

 to that which, on the special charts, was filled up with the dots. By 

 this arrangement the general view is much facilitated, but the exact 

 number of the traps can be found now only in the list. The red spots 

 on the chart therefore show, not only the sihiation of the traps, but hj 

 the size of the spots also the numher of the traps. The red crosses mark 

 eel-trap fisheries outside Denmark. 



Although we cannot suppose, to be sure, that the same number of eels 

 is fished in all eel- traps, and that exactly 10 times as many eels are caught 

 at a place where there are 1000 eel-traps, as at a place where there are only 

 100 traps, I think we may be so bold as to presume that the greatest number 

 of eels is caught at those piaces where, year after year, the greatest number 

 of traps has been, and is still, standiug, and that the numher of traps there- 

 fore, on the whole, is diredly proportional to the nnniher af the migratorti eels, 

 particularly when a louger series of years is taken into consideration. 



When we look at the chart*) from this point of view, we must, no 

 doubt, be astouished that there are so few traps on the south coast of Møen, 

 Falster, Laaland, Langeland, and Ærø, as also ou the northern coasts of Funen 

 and Zealand. It is indeed only in the Sound, in the Great and the Little 

 Belt, and on the eastern shores of Jutland, north of Hou, that the great fisheries 

 are found. If the eels did come in from the Baltic Sea, through our Belts, 

 in numbers which were immensely great compared to those which had 

 grown up in our seas, then we should have expected to find the great fisheries 

 aloug our southern shores, and along the headlands in the Belts, nearest 

 to the mid-fairway; but the chart shows no such thiug. In accordance 

 with such a theory of an immense emigration from the Baltie Sea, experi- 

 ments have been made on a large scale, for iustance at Albuen; but they 

 have not sueceeded. Tlie dashiug of the waves agaiust the southern shores, 

 it is true, is rather powerful, but not euough so, to prevent the fishery, if 



•) By compariDg the General Chart with tlie chart of our eel-flsheries in C. F. 

 Drechsel' s "Oversigt over vore Saltvandsliskerier, 1890", p. 48, we tind essential differences, 

 owing to the faet that several new great fisheries have grown iip since then. See e. g. 

 the western part of the Limfjord and AVest-Laaland. On the main, of conrse, the charts 

 agree with one another, apart from the number of the traps, i. e. tho size of the red spots. 



