5 
a clause in Magna Charta prohibiting certain nets being 
used because certain sea fishes were falling off. 
What I object to in the management of the Lancashire 
Sea Fisheries is that there has been no honest attempt made 
to place before the public and- before the members of the 
County Council the full bearing of the subject. I was utterly 
disgusted in the earlier stages when I saw the officials 
taking out fish salesmen and landsmen. People who cer- 
tainly had no knowledge whatever (for even a fish salesman 
as such knows nothing of fishery questions beyond the 
market value of different species), were taken out to sea and 
were shown the effect of a trawl net in bringing up a large 
number of small fish, and were dismissed with the idea that 
this was the normal state of things in our Fisheries, and 
that in a very few years there would not be a fish in the sea. 
Now, sir, there are three great laws that regulate the 
supply of fish in water, both fresh water and sea water, and 
those three laws are easily capable of demonstration. The 
first is enormous power of reproduction. The female cod, 
when they come on the spawning grounds in winter or early 
spring deposit on an average nine million eggs apiece; the 
conger eel I note from my own observation deposits from four- 
teen to fifteen million eggs, and all food fishes are enormously 
prolific, though the actual number of eggs differs in. different 
species. Ifthe eggs laid along the Lancashire coast only, 
in one year, were all to hatch and all to grow to adult size, 
