150 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



the results or prevent us from reaching them,^ the investigations must 

 be carried on with a special regard to the needs of a good administration, 

 which ought, therefore, to be clearly specified. 



A complete knowledge of everything pertaining to law and adminis- 

 tration is certainly just as necessary for the legislator as a technical, 

 economical, and scientific knowledge. This last-mentioned knowledge 

 is necessary for proving the practicability of the legislative and admin- 

 istrative measures; and in order that the full s^ignificanco of these meas- 

 ures may be understood, a sufficient knowledge of local and technical 

 conditions is required. A satisfactory solution of the whole fishery- 

 question, to serve as a basis for systematic investigations and for a reform 

 of fishery-legislation, can therefore only be reached by placing each sep- 

 arate part of the question in thoroughly competent hands. The lack 

 of such preliminary and preparatory measures is doubtless one of the 

 chief causes of deplorable defects in our fishery-legislation and of prac- 

 tical mistakes springing from them. 



What we need, therefore, is a complete and systematically arranged 

 review of all the laws relating to the Bohuslan salt-water fisheries from 

 the oldest times down to the present. Such a review should, as far as 

 possible, give the causes of every amendment to these laws and tell us 

 how the amended laws worked ; the laws should be examined with the 

 view of testing their applicability to the changed circumstances of our 

 times, and they should finally be compared with the experience of other 

 countries. If all this were done in a most thorough manner, we might 

 look for truly beneficial results. 



§ 15. In order to fully understand the Bohuslan salt-water fisheries, 

 some purely historical investigations are necessary, which may yield 

 some material of great value which could not have been obtained in any 

 other way. As an illustration of this assertion we may quote the exam- 

 ple of Axel Boecl', who, in his well-known work, " Om Silden og Silde- 

 fislcerienie" (On the herring and the herring-fisheries), has based his 

 whole treatment of the important questions, " why the great periodical 

 Scandinavian herring-fisheries have ceased "^, and '- what influence is by 

 outward physical conditions exercised on the migrations of the herrings" 

 on such investigations.^'^ Besides, how could we without such historical 

 investigations ever settle the question regarding the nature, spawning- 

 time, &c., of the old Bohuslan herrings ? " or corroborate or disprove the 



* Thas it has often been the case that practical objects have been used as a bait for 

 carrying through purely theoretical measures, which in no way could prove a benefit 

 for the trade. 



M. BoecTi, " Om Silden," &c., I, Christiania, 1871, p. 82-119. 



'» " " " " I, p. 72-82. 



" The supposition regarding the relation of the old Bohuslan herring to the present 

 heiTing forms, as is well known, the basis for all our fishery-legislation since 1852 ; and 

 the opponents of this legislation, therefore, chiefly direct their attacks against this 

 supposition. (See " Handlingar rorande siUfisket i bohusldnska Skdrgarden," Stockholm, 

 1843, p. 71-73, 156,172. " Gotebarg's HandeU-och Sjofarts-Tidning, 1853, No. 147, sup- 

 plement. " Xya Handlingar, tfc," I, Gottenburg, 1874, p. 22-24, 29-32, 63-66.) 



