156 DESTRUCTION OF IMMATURE FISH. 



Of immature round fish Prof. Mclntosli captured an altogether 

 insignificant number, the largest number being gurnards. Mr. Cun- 

 ningham reports that small specimens of various species (whiting, 

 pollack, pouting, hake, ling, doreys, and sea breams) are not uncommon 

 in the contents of the large trawls, but he does not remember to have 

 seen a specimen less than six inches in length. But the numbers of 

 these small marketable fishes are altogether insignificant when com- 

 pared to the cuckoo or boar fish [Capros aper), of which small species 

 (it is less than six inches in length when full grown) vast numbers 

 are sometimes caught. It is important to observe that round and 

 flat fishes under six inches in length are caught in the large-meshed 

 trawl, as it has often been maintained that soles and other fish of 

 that size escape through the meshes. The conclusion with regard to 

 flat fishes is that the young forms are not generally found in deep 

 water, and that the large trawls do not and cannot destroy immature 

 flat-fish. As for round fish it is known that when young they frequent 

 rocky bottoms where the trawl cannot work, and their rarity in the 

 trawl proves that they are not destroyed by it. 



In fact no case has been made out against beam trawling. First 

 it was attacked on the grounds that it was destructive of spawn, and 

 this was speedily disproved ; lately it has been attacked on the ground 

 that it is destructive of immature fish, and this was disproved by the 

 Royal Commissioners of 1883, whose conclusions have been confirmed 

 at Plymouth ; the last possible grounds of attack were equally dis- 

 posed of by the Royal Commissioners, and it would be well if agitators 

 would now let beam trawling alone. The complaints made of the 

 destruction of very young fish in bays and estuaries appear, however, 

 to have more foundation in fact, though more knowledge is sadly 

 required. It is well known that in summer in certain localities 

 millions of very small fish are to be seen along the margin of the 

 shore, and that they often perish in vast numbers through the drying 

 up of tidal pools by the sun. They are also eaten by gulls and by 

 other fishes. A certain proportion escape destruction, and, according 

 to their species, seek different habitats during their adolescence. It 

 is an open question whether man can possibly destroy such a quantity 

 of very young fish as to make any difference to the number of those 

 that come to maturity. Often as it has been insisted upon, the 

 public does not appear to realise that every female fish that comes 

 to maturity lays a prodigious number of eggs ; that if millions of these 

 perish before hatching, or before they come to maturity after they 

 are hatched, there will still be as many or even more adults left as 

 the parents from which they had their origin, and that in spite of 

 the seemingly enormous waste, the number of the species is kept up. 

 That this is the case is familiar to all students of natural history, but 



