432 EXAMINATION OF THE PRESENT STATE 
untouched, to serve as a nursery for the whole North Sea for plaice, 
turbot, and to a less extent of brill and soles, and as a spawning haven for 
soles, brill and turbot. 
There are certain objections to the plan, to which we must return 
later, turning our attention for the present to the recommendations 
of the Parliamentary Committee. 
The Committee found themselves unable to recommend either the 
biological hmits (though I am not aware that these hmits were re- 
commended for legislative purposes) or those of the Conference of 
1892. They considered that ‘“ while it might be desirable to 
forbid the sale of small flat-fish, the adoption of the sizes suggested 
would involve great hardship to many of the poorer fishermen who 
fish near the shore in the smaller class of boats.”” The Committee 
seems to have been further dominated with a fear of originality, 
and considered that the size limit adopted should approximate to 
that already adopted by foreign countries. 
Such limits are as follows: 
Belgium— 
Place : . 7:2 inches total length. 
Soles. f Ae. a 
Turbot . ; . 0 5 io 
Brill : : P10 a an 
Denmark— 
Plaice .- : . 8 inches from nose to root of tail, 
Turbot ; : . 8 ” 32 5B) 
France— 
Plaice . : . 5 inches from eye to root of tail. 
Sole : : : D3 oP) oe) Bh) 
The limits recommended for the United Kingdom are : 
Plaice . : . 8 inches total length. 
Sole 4 : ap ROMs 5 
Turbot . : =e OS ees: e 
Brill : , 0 
a3 a? 
So far as the North Sea is concerned, this brilliant proposition 
cannot be said to make any important ditference in the existing con- 
dition of the fishery. As a matter of fact the only fishermen whom it 
will in any way affect are the longshore men, whose interests the 
Committee were so anxious to safeguard. Inshore fish-trawlers and 
shrimpers will be deprived of a certain number of marketable plaice 
and soles; the deep-sea men will be deprived of nothing :—they 
catch no soles under 8 inches, and few, if any, which are as small, 
