180 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
official of the British Government, I have no official authority here, and have no right 
to say anything in any way on behalf of my country, and I should hesitate to say a word 
which might be held to be anything like an official statement in the matter. However, I 
thought it necessary to point out that there was a reason for the apparently inconsistent 
attitude taken by my country in the premises. 
With respect to one main question involved in the paper before us, namely, that 
the extension of the territorial limits was apparently necessary in order to give encour- 
agement to the cultivation of the sea bed, in regard to such fisheries as those for shell- 
fish, I would point out that the range covered by the existing limits is already sufficiently 
wide, without going further afield and giving proprietary rights beyond the 3-mile line. 
There are very few cases in which fisheries for shellfish, especially, are carried on to 
such an extent as to justify any proposal for placing any wider area of the sea bed under 
proprietary jurisdiction. 
