8 
Fisheries Districts is not satistactory. The Districts are 
too numerous and unequal, the boundary lines are arbi- 
trary and unnatural, the methods of the Authorities are 
too diverse; and, as a result, the fisheries are very un- 
equally treated both as to administration and investiga- 
tion. A glance at the details of expenditure of the 
difterent Committees is enough to show how perfunctory 
and inadequate the examination and protection of the 
fisheries must be on some parts of the coast. 
For these, and other reasons, the Iechthyological Com- 
mittee in their Report last year recommended for purposes 
of fisheries investigation a consolidation of the Districts 
and Authorities on each of the three great coast lines of 
England and Wales—LHast, South and West. It may be 
worth while to reproduce once more the accompanying 
rough sketch plan in order to bring this idea clearly 
before the mind and to show how the three suggested 
Districts form natural coast areas. Mr. Fell has since 
shown* that there would be advantages in the amalga- 
mation of the present Committees on each coast, not only 
for purposes of investigation but also for administration. 
He has gone into the question of probable income and 
expenditure and finds that each such large area would 
have a rateable value of about thirty millions sterling, 
yielding, on the rate of one-sixteenth of a penny in the 
pound, a sum which, according to our Lancashire scale 
of expenditure, ought to be ample for the proposed work. 
In these calculations London is left out of account. Its 
contribution, from a similar rate, if obtainable, might be 
applied to general central expenses or to special work 
applying to the whole country. 
Looking at the West Coast as now administered it is 
obviously unnatural and inconvenient that the large 
* I quote from a letter and from a speech by Mr. Fell. So far as 
I am aware his tigures have not yet been published. 
