142 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



fishing town; and we are straightway told that Bnckhorn, or Kirksalt, 

 or some equally obscure place, could be made to rival those towns in 

 Holland, whose wealth and prosperity originated in even smaller begin- 

 nings. We ai^e likewise inlormed, on the occasions of giving publicity 

 to such speculations, that "the sea is a liquid mine of boundless wealth, 

 and that thousands of pounds might be earned by simply stretching 

 forth our hands and pulling out the fish that have scarcely room to live 

 in the teeming waters of Great Britain," &c. I would be glad" to 

 beli!?ve in these general statements regarding our food-fisheries, were I 

 not convinced, from personal inquiry, that they are a mere coinage of 

 the brain. 



There are, doubtless, plenty of fish still in the sea, but the trouble of 

 capturing them increases daily, and the instruments of capture have to 

 be yearly augmented, indicating but too clearly to all who have studied 

 the subject, that we are beginning to overfish. We already know, in 

 the case of the salmon, that the greed of man, when thoroughly excited, 

 can extirpate, for mere immediate gain, any animal, however prolific it 

 may be. Son^e of the British game-birds have so narrowly escaped 

 destruction that their existence, in anything like quantity', when set 

 against the armies of sportsmen who seek their annihilation, is wonderful. 



As has been mentioned in a previous chapter of this volume, the 

 su)>pl3- of haddocks and other Gadidm was once so plentiful around the 

 British coasts that a short line, with perhaps a score of hooks, fre- 

 quently replenished with bait,, would be quite sufficient to capture a 

 few thousand fish. The number of hooks was gradually' extended, till 

 now they are counted by the thousand, the fishermen having to multiply 

 the means of capture as the fish become less plentiful. About forty 

 years ago the i)ercentage of fish to each line was very considerable. 

 Eight hundred hooks would take about 750 fish; but now, \Yith a line 

 studded with 4,000 hooks, the fishermen sometimes do not take 100 

 fish. • 



It was recently stated by a correspondent of the John O'Groat Jour- 

 nal, a newspaper i)ublished in the fishing-town of Wick, that a fish- 

 curer there contracted some years ago with the boats for haddocks at 

 3s. 6d. per hundred, and that, at that low price, the fishing yielded the 

 men from £20 to £40 each season, but that now, although he has olfered 

 the fishermen 12s. a hundred, he cannot procure anything like an ade- 

 quate supply. As the British sea-fisheries aftbrd remunerative employ- 

 ment to a large body of the population, and offer a favorable invest- 

 ment, it is surely time that we should know authoritatively whether or 

 not there be truth in the falling off in our supplies of herring and other 

 white fish. At one of the Glasgow fish-merchants' annual soirees, held 

 a year or two ago, it was distinctly stated that all kinds of fish were 

 less abundant now than in former years, and that in proportion to the 

 means of capture, the result was less. Mr. Methuen reiterated such 

 opinions again and again. "I reckon our fisheries," said this enter- 

 prising fish-merchant on one occasion, "if fostered and properly fished, 

 a national source of wealth of more importance and value than the 

 gold-mines of Australia, because the gold-mines are exhaustible; but 

 the living, propagating, self-cultiv^ating gift of God is inexhaustible, if 

 rightly fished by man, to whom they are given for food. It is evident 

 anything God gives is ripe and fit for food. 'Have dominion,' not de- 

 struction, was the command. * Any farmer cutting his ripe clover grass 

 would not only be reckoned mad, but would, in fact, be so, were he to 

 tear up the roots along with the clover, under the idea that he was thus 

 obtaining more food for his cattle, and then wondering why he had no 



