OF THE GRIMSBY TRAWL FISHERY. 427 
Though I can produce no information on the subject, it is reason- 
able to suppose that the large shrimping industry in the inshore 
waters of the Dutch, German, and Danish coasts is not unattended 
by a destruction of immature flat-fish corresponding to that which 
I have shown to take place on our own coast. 
Whatever other factors may have been at work in the admitted 
deterioration, there can be no doubt that the above furnish ample 
cause for at least a great part of the decrease, and if any method 
can be devised to check these evils alone, we shall be in a fair way 
to a revival of the supply. It behoves us therefore to consider, as 
carefully as a limited space will permit, whatever propositions have 
been brought forward with this view. 
These fall chiefly under the following headings : 
(i) Prohibition of sale of fish under certain sizes. 
(11) Extension of the territorial limits. 
(111) Close seasons. 
(iv) Restrictions of mesh. 
(v) Artificial propagation. 
Other suggestions have been put forward, and will be discussed 
in turn, but hardly merit separate enumeration. 
(i) Prohibition of sale of fish wnder certain sizes. 
A brilliant suggestion that the capture of undersized fish should 
be prohibited need not detain us long, since it is obviously 
impossible to avoid catching some undersized fish if one fishes at all, 
and what benefit could be expected from a legal prohibition of this 
sort I am ata loss to conjecture, since the law could not possibly 
be enforced as long as a fisherman was allowed to go to sea. There 
are, of course, methods by which the capture of a very large pro- 
portion of undersized fish can be prevented, but prohibition of 
capture, per se, is not one of these, 
We may pass, therefore, to the question of prohibiting the sale, 
accompanied or not, as the case may be, by similar restriction as to 
landing. 
This is the remedial measure which has found by far the greatest 
number of advocates, but there has been a very considerable differ- 
ence in the sizes advocated. It may seem at first sight that this is 
of comparatively little importance, so long as the principle of pro- 
hibition of sale is agreed to, but in reality the principle involved 
depends entirely upon the size to which the prohibition refers. 
We have seen, in Chapter I, that the standard of size may be 
arrived at by two entirely different methods, according to whether 
it 1s sought to discriminate (a) between sexually mature fish and 
