disappearance of any particular kind of fish, we may pos- 

 sibly be able to prevent the ruin which its disappearance 

 entails on large communities of industrious and hardy 

 fishermen and their families ; we may possibly find out 

 where the fish go, and so enable the fishermen to follow 

 them ; or we may at least prepare the fishermen for the 

 impending failure of one branch of their industry and 

 enable them to take measures for the more efficient prose- 

 cution of another. At any rate, if we can prove that it is 

 Nature and not Man that is at the bottom of the matter, we 

 shall not have demands for hasty legislation restricting 

 the fishermen in the pursuit of a calling which requires 

 development rather than curtailment. On the other hand, 

 if it is found that man's interference has had a prejudicial 

 effect on the fisheries, and that Man and not Nature is the 

 cause of their deterioration, we shall be able to enact wise 

 laws for their protection, instead of taking a " leap in the 

 dark," which may be productive of disaster rather than of 

 benefit. 



Though artificial causes undoubtedly do exert a very 

 powerful and often very destructive influence upon certain 

 fisheries, such as those of our rivers and lakes, and others 

 confined within comparatively narrow limits close to the 

 shore, it is evident that the farther you get out into the 

 deep sea the more infinitesimal are the effects of your 

 mightiest efforts. In the case of fish of such prodigious 

 powers of reproduction as the herring, the cod, the haddock, 

 the mackerel, the whiting, the hake, and others, of which, 

 for every one that all the fishermen in the world catch, tens 

 and hundreds are destroyed by their natural enemies and 

 by each other — the fathers and mothers often preying upon 

 their own children — it is not difficult to see that not only 

 is the cry of " over-fishing " a false alarm, but our appliances 



