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undergo; that was a matter recorded not only in the minds 
but the pockets of a large number of persons. The same 
considerations applied to all forms of fish culture, and 
unless those who undertook it were prepared to work at it 
with that happy combination of science and practice which 
was exemplified in the case of Sir James Maitland, dis- 
appointment would await their efforts, as it had those of 
many persons who had attempted the same process. For 
himself, he did not take very rosy views of the value of 
protection pure and simple for sea fisheries, but perhaps 
he was all the more inclined to attach especial value to 
thoroughly well considered and scientific fish culture. He 
was inclined to think that it was in this direction we must 
look, and not to measures of inefficient protection, for the 
ultimate preservation of our fisheries. This was not the 
time to discuss the point, but he gathered from Mr. 
Wilmot’s remarks that there was some extremely wicked 
person who had been saying that protection was of no use 
in Salmon fisheries; that people should be allowed to 
destroy anything and everything they liked; but anybody 
who heard the remarks he had ventured to offer at the first 
Conference would be aware that he, at any rate, was not 
one of those wicked persons. No one had insisted more 
strenuously than he had done on the absolute necessity for 
the most careful protection for those sea fisheries in which 
protection could be shown to be efficient, and if any one 
were prepared to show that measures of protection as 
efficient as those which were adopted in the Salmon 
fisheries, and which must be enforced unless the Salmon 
fishes were to be destroyed, would be equally efficient in 
the case of any of the sea fisheries, by all means let them 
be adopted, and no one would be a stronger advocate for 
protection than he should be; but, until it was made clear 
