20 
of investigations, and they recommended that a Govern- 
ment Department should be equipped to carry it out. I 
am of opinion that the matter would be better entrusted, 
as I have indicated above, to the local Sea-Fisheries 
Committees. However, there are the two methods— 
1. To form a properly equipped Government Depart- 
ment (comparable with the Geological Survey), 
with laboratories and steamers and a scientific 
staff competent to tackle the scientific problems 
involved. This is the method adopted in the 
United States and elsewhere. 
2. The other, and perhaps the more characteristically 
Knglish method, is to give fuller powers to the 
local authorities, and to encourage them to spend 
money on the necessary investigations in their own 
districts. 
Correct statistics are very important, and they could 
probably be taken at least as efficiently by the sea-fisheries 
officers, under the control and supervision of the Fisheries 
Superintendent in each district, as by the Board of Trade 
officials; but no system for the collection of statistics even 
if much better than that now employed can take the place 
of a scheme of periodic scientific observations and inyesti- 
gations such as I desire to see carried out all around the 
coast by the local Sea-Fisheries Committees. 
It is, I think, agreed on all hands that what is most 
urgently required is facts—but facts that can only be 
ascertained by continuous work on a sufficiently large 
scale. The Select Committee on the Sea-Fisheries Bill 
last summer reported that the Scottish Fishery Board’s 
‘investigations have been hampered by inadequate means. 
They have not much money at their disposal, and the 
vessel which they have for the purpose of scientific inves- 
tigation is undoubtedly too small.” 
