30 THE FISHERIES LAWS. 



the Minister for Lands to grant leases. Then it proposes to vest the control 

 of our fisheries for the future in six unpaid Commissioners ; after which it 

 goes on to make provision for the appointment of the necessary officers — a 

 secretary and inspectors — to carry out the arrangements of the Commis- 

 sioners as far as the fisheries are concerned. The Bill also provides that 

 the police, and officers of the Marine Board holding office in remote localities, 

 shall act as assistant inspectors, in order more economically to carry out 

 inspection on remote rivers, inlets, and harbours. The fishery waters are to 

 be divided into three distinct grounds. There is to be the home fishery, the 

 northern fishery, and the southern fishery ; and the Bill empowers the Com- 

 missioners to make the necessary regulations for their protection. Although 

 I believe that we cannot lay claim to anything like the rich sources of supply 

 which some other countries possess, still I think our fish supplies are far 

 more rich and valuable than is generally supposed. It cannot be for a 

 moment doubted that an enormous waste goes on by the destruction of 

 spawn and young fish — a waste which is altogether beyond any calculation 

 in excess of the mere diminution of our fish supplies by the consumption of 

 the fish as an article of food. The Commissioners make some reference in 

 their report to the destruction of fish which is constantly going on, and I will 

 trouble the House with one or two short extracts from it. On page 33 the 

 report says — 



" With an extensive sea-board, an apparently unlimited supply of fish, and 

 a very limited consumption, it might naturally be supposed that for many 

 years to come legislation for the preservation of the fisheries of New 8outh 

 Wales would be premature and unnecessary. Experience, however, tells a 

 very different tale. It is undoubted that in and about Port Jaclvson, Botany 

 Bay, Broken Bay, and the Lakes Macquarie and Tuggerah, and indeed at 

 every place easily reached by the Sydney fisherman, the quantity of fish has 

 fallen off" enormously of late years, and is continuing to do so. If this were 

 due to the legitimate exhaustion of the supply by its use for food, or indeed 

 for any useful purpose, there would be less reason for regret or interference; 

 but the fact being that the quantity of fish caught and consumed has never 

 at any time been sufficient of itself to affect to any appreciable degree the 

 supply, and that the diminution which is going on in the supply of some of 

 our best fishes is due entirely to the wanton destruction by fishermen of the 

 spawn and young, indicates a state of things which demands immediate 

 legislative interference." 



To show the enormous extent to which the destruction of this very valu- 

 able article of food may go, I will quote a reference made by the report to 

 another part of the world — a part of the world which like ours has a new 

 population. Alluding to the Sacramento and Columbia Rivers, the report 

 Bays — 



" There is not a salmon river in Europe that does not annually liberate a 

 much larger number of artificially-reared fish than the annual catch, and the 

 process has been adopted and carried out most successfully on the western 

 coasts of North America, a country newer to European advancement and 

 civilisation even than we are ourselves. The many millions of large salmon 

 annually tinned or canned on the Sacramento and Columbia Rivers seem 

 not as yet to affect the supply, but we find from a report of the Com- 

 missioners of Californian fisheries for 1878 and 1879 that in the Sacramento 

 River the supply is amply kept up by the annual hatching and liberation o£ 

 2,500,000 young fish. It is probable that the same effectual mode of pre- 

 venting exhaustion of the supply is employed on the Columbia, where a still 



