17 



eaten every year, not only in London but throughout the 

 country. But it is as fallacious to argue that, because the 

 herring fisheries are inexhaustible, therefore all fisheries 

 are inexhaustible too, as to contend that, because the 

 salmon fisheries are capable of being fished out, unless 

 adequately protected, therefore all other fisheries require 

 similar protective laws. The cases of the salmon and the 

 herring have been proved to demonstration ; but there 

 are others that have not, and, as the opponents of trawl- 

 ing have reduced their case to a point on which we have 

 no definite information, the question becomes one for 

 investigation. They claim the prohibition of " inshore 

 trawling," i.e. trawling in bays and within a certain distance 

 of the shore, on the ground, first, that trawlers should be 

 kept out of the way of the smaller boats engaged in other 

 modes of fishing ; and, second, that the bays arc " the 

 nurseries " for young fish. The former point will be 

 referred to later on. As regards the latter, it may be 

 pointed out that there is no proof that the inshore banks 

 and bays are or are not the sole, or even the principal, 

 ground on which the supply for maintaining the stock of fish 

 in the sea is produced. We require to know more of the 

 habits of the fish particularly affected, their times and places 

 of spawning, their migrations, their food, and so forth, before 

 we can arrive at anything like a definite conclusion on this 

 subject. That the question is a many-sided one is evident. 

 The complications of this, as of almost every other, fishery 

 question, were illustrated a few days ago in a Paper read by 

 Dr. Day on the Food of Fish, in which he pointed out 

 that, if the mesh of the trawlers were so arranged as to 

 allow all small soles to escape, the smallest sole of all, solea 

 mimita — an insignificant and worthless creature never 

 exceeding when full grown three or four inches in length— 

 [32] c 



