112 THE SEA-FISHERIES [PART I 



when they are visited and fished. Usually they are owned and 

 worked by men who are not regular fishermen but who augment 

 incomes derived fi:'om farming or other forms of casual employment, 

 by occasional fishing. Baulks and weirs are rather destructive 

 "fixed engines," that is they are quite indiscriminate in their 

 action and often take large numbers of small fish of little or no 

 economic value. To the naturalist they are interesting apparatus, 

 but they are generally discouraged by the fishery administrators 

 and are maintained in virtue of some fishing right enjoyed by the 

 land owner. 



Steam trawling, steam lining and steam drifting are the organ- 

 ised sections of the fishing industry of these islands. The economic 

 changes in progress at the present day apparently make for the 

 absorption of the greater part of the fishermen into one or other 

 of these forms of fishing. Steam trawling is carried on by limited 

 companies, and even many of the smacks are owned likewise. So 

 also with the steam liners and drifters. Most of the herring boats 

 and many of the smacks are owned by the men who sail them, and 

 often the crews are part owners of the craft they sail in and are 

 connected together by ties of relationship. Practically all of the 

 smaller second class boats are owned by those who work them. 

 This is as it should be, but it may be observed that the fishermen 

 who work the smacks, the sailing liners and drifters and the 

 second class boats are, judged by modern commercial ideas, the 

 unprogressive portion of the fishing population. They are, as a 

 rule, mahogany-faced, broad-chested and heavily-built men who 

 are usually very comfortable in their circumstances, and may be 

 classed as a little above the ordinary man who lives in the towns 

 and follows some artisan form of employment. Many of them 

 own their houses and not a few the boats they work. The fisher- 

 men who work in the steamers do not possess the well-marked 

 characteristics of the class I have just alluded to, and constitute a 

 group of the fishing population which is fast approximating towards 

 the class of sea-faring men who are to be found in the stoke-holes 

 and before the mast in our modern cargo steamers. The steam 

 trawlers are to a very great extent manned by those who have 

 not the training of the fisherman who has been brought up 

 under sail. Many have not the hardihood to follow the rougher 



