40 
fish on the various grounds was due to overfishing or to 
natural causes, or, at least, if they were artificial causes, 
whether they were not something apart from trawl- 
fishing. It was somewhat remarkable, that though turbot 
was stated to be one of the most prolific of fish, it was 
one of the scarcest ; yet there had been instances within 
his recollection of turbot abounding in immense quan- 
tities in the vicinity of Falls Banks and New Ground 
Bank, and the vessels which were there to catch them 
were insignificant in number, and the gear they used 
would be looked upon almost as a shrimp-net as com- 
pared to a trawl. Mr. Jex had referred to laws being 
enacted in the reign of Edward III. to protect small fish, 
when the statement was made that but for this protec- 
tion the fish in the North Sea would have been exter- 
minated. It was also said that it would take longer to 
obtain a given quantity of fish now than formerly, but 
that was not exactly correct. Fishermen were not accus- 
tomed to reason very closely, they were the most ready 
to come to hasty conclusions of any men he knew any- 
thing about, and did so simply because they had not 
the same varied experience as men whose associations were 
on land, and who were engaged in different commercial 
transactions. He would ask any practical fisherman what 
was the nature of the appliances for hoisting fish out of the 
water on to the vessel’s deck. It consisted of certain tackle 
and numbers of sheaves, a certain sized rope, and a certain 
mechanical contrivance to heave it in; but what had they 
thirty-five or forty years ago? If you asked the North Sea 
fisherman to-day to go to sea with the sort of tackle he had 
thirty years ago for hoisting the fish in, he would say it was 
no use going to sea with such apparatus, that he would 
catch more fish than he could lift out of the water with it. 
