4I 
to these ‘absurd statements, and I would respectfully ask 
any member of the Sea Fisheries Committee to go on the 
cockle beds, gather a sack of cockles, convey it to the 
railway station, receive nothing for it, and then say how 
long they would like to continue such an unprofitable job. 
If in addition there were a wife and children clamouring 
for bread at home, would not the cockler speedily find 
something else to do, or ‘‘ come on the Parish.” 
I do not deny that the cocklers, like anyone else en- 
gaged in the grim struggle for existence, may occasionally 
over estimate the demands of the markets, and send up too 
many cockles, when naturally the finest specimens will get 
the advantage and there will be a loss on the smaller, but 
that itis the regular practice of cocklers to deliberately 
waste their energies in undergoing the enormous labour of 
getting unsaleable fish is too absurd even for argument, 
though it may appear reasonable to pure scientists. 
The question then resolves itself thus : is it economically 
wise to take cockles a little less than at present allowed, 
and so relieve the cocklers from their present trouble, and 
leave economic laws, which happily work free of cost, to 
settle the exact size. I think if we examine the destructive 
methods of Dame Nature, we must conclude that the 
‘cocklers may safely be left to her government. 
A very able correspondent of « Land and Water,” some 
twenty years since, from an examination of the contents of 
