48 



Association, or of the Meteorological Society, or of the 

 Scottish Fisheries Improvement Association, or of the 

 Fisheries Preservation Association, or of the Institute of 

 Civil Engineers, or even of the Linnaean Society and other 

 learned bodies ; for, in dealing exhaustively with every 

 question relating to fish and fisheries, it would necessarily 

 find some portion of the ground which it proposed to 

 occupy already partially covered in different ways by each 

 and all of these bodies. But there is a large area of vacant 

 ground, not yet taken up, which ought to be thoroughly 

 surveyed, in order that the complex questions affecting the 

 fisheries should be thoroughly worked out from every point 

 of view. A central institution is therefore needed which 

 should not only occupy every inch of ground hitherto 

 unoccupied, but assist in developing what is but imper- 

 fectly tilled, and also direct and aid, and at the same time 

 derive assistance from, the operations of societies already 

 diligently working in their own special field. At the present 

 moment there is no such central body in existence, and 

 I doubt if there is any society so organised that it could 

 be expanded to do the work which lies waiting to be 

 taken up. 



If it be seriously maintained that there is no room for 

 such an institution as I have proposed, because the 

 IMational Fish Culture Association already exists, I fail 

 to see how there can be room for a second body specially 

 formed to take up the particular work which the Fish 

 Culture Association has cut out for itself ; and I own, 

 therefore, to a feeling of surprise when I find from Mr. 

 Marston's Paper on " Coarse P'ish Culture,"* read on 

 June 29, 1883, that he has himself assisted in the creation 

 of such a body,t — the " United London Anglers' Fisheries 

 Society," — to take up the very work that the Fish Culture 

 Association was formed to carry out, and that he couples 

 the two societies together $ in a recommendation that they 

 should devote their energies to the "hatching and rearing " of 

 " fry of all kinds of coarse fish for distribution to angling 

 clubs and private individuals requiring these fish." § 



* " International Fisheries Conference Paper on ' Coarse Fish 

 Culture,' by R. B. Marston, editor of the Fishing Gazette, and member 

 of the Executive Committee of the National Fish Culture Association." 

 • — Published by William Clowes & Sons, Limited, for the International 

 Fisheries Exhibition. 



t Ibid., pp. 7 and 10. 

 • X ibid., p. 13. 



§ Ibid., p. II. 



