14 
to put the deductions to be drawn from their experiments 
into the light of what actually takes place, and the lessons 
I think we may gather from them. I speak from the 
experience gathered in hundreds of expeditions with the 
fishermen in their own boats, using their own tackle, and 
using it-as they ordinarily do, not as used on the ‘ John 
Fell,” the C.C. Fisheries Steamer. 
I am obliged for a text to go back to Professor Hard- 
man’s report for 1894, those for 1895-96-97 being absolutely 
barren of any fact really adding to our knowledge, but con- 
sisting of learned descriptions of the structure of certain 
small crustaceans, and a series of beautiful sketches of their 
anatomy, and various. articles on scientific (principally 
microscopic) subjects; they are in fact articles on these 
subjects published at the expense of the county; if they 
were reports of research endowed as such, we should have 
no cause of complaint, but as the report of men harassing 
the fishermen as they are doing, they are both useless and 
misleading. On turning to the 1894 report we find on page 
4g a typical description of experiments and deductions. 
We give the report in full. 
‘©The statistics of hauls taken during the past year 
from the steamer show once more, if any showing is still 
needed, that that destructive engine, the shrimp trawl, 
brings up along with a miserably small number of 
shrimps an astonishingly large number of young food 
fishes. On November 2nd, off the Ribble estuary, with 
