Intejiiatlonal Fisheries Rxhibition. 



LONDON, 1883. 



Conference on July 27TH, 1883. 



E. BiRKBECK, Esq., MP., in the chair. 



A NATIONAL FISHERIES SOCIETY. 



Mr. Fryer spoke as follows : 



When I was invited, before these Conferences began, to 

 read a Paper on some question connected with the Fishing 

 Industry, and suggested, as a subject, the proposal, which I 

 have the honour to bring under your notice to-day, for the 

 formation of a National Society which should take up and 

 carry on permanently, and on an extended basis, the good 

 work which this Exhibition is, for the time being, doing in 

 promoting a practical knowledge of the Fisheries, and in 

 fostering enterprise in their development, I little thought that 

 my suggestion would have received, by anticipation, such 

 influential support as was accorded to it in the Inaugural 

 Address delivered by the distinguished gentleman under 

 whom I have the honour to serve, and who then expressed 

 the " confident belief. . . that in these Conferences we have the 

 germ out of which, by due process of evolution, a society 

 especially devoted to the promotion of the interests of the 

 fisheries of these islands may spring." 



Unless, by some process of " thought-reading " peculiar to 

 himself, Professor Huxley was able to ascertain what was 

 then going on in my mind, he could not have had the 

 [32J B 2 



