Il 
Suppose you were to bring someone from the country 
and take him into one of our mills and into the cellars 
below, and show him how the yarns were being damped, 
he might go away thinking us a most immoral lot, and if he 
were a parson he would preach most violent sermons against 
us, as has in fact been done by a very eminent minister of 
religion in Manchester; he would probably advise penal 
legislation. We know perfectly well that yarns must be 
conditioned, and that it is as much part of the process of 
producing them as spinning. If we were to get a Cockney 
from the centre of London, and take him out to a farm, and 
show him the farmer thrashing his wheat and sending the 
bulk of it to the mill instead of saving it and sowing it, and 
led him to believe that every grain so treated was a plant 
destroyed, what would he think about it? You could per- 
suade him that it was a monstrous and extravagant proceed- 
ing. But misrepresentation of this kind is infinitely worse 
in the sea. Wheat produces say 100 fold, but the seed, 
as we may call it, of fishes is to be calculated by a million 
fold in many cases, and in nearly all our food fishes is enor- 
mous, so that only a mere fraction of the young can ever 
find room in which to grow. This illustration was used by 
the Sea Fisheries Commissioners in 1878. 
In reference to the position of the fishermen, what I 
complain bitterly of in our sea fisheries scientists is the con- 
tinual condemnation of the men, and utter misrepresentation 
