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fry and the full-grown herring ; the cod, ling, dog-fish, and 

 conger, fed on the full-grown herring ; while the flat-fish and 

 crabs eat the spawn, and there were innumerable other 

 fish which eat herring-fry. At the time when they found 

 them on their spawning banks, these fish had an appetite 

 for nothing else but herring, and this result followed, that 

 the fishermen of cod and ling could catch nothing, because 

 they would only take herring bait at the time, and the close 

 time prevented the fishermen getting any herring-bait for 

 catching this white fish. The consequence was, that the 

 laws invented for the protection of the herring became laws 

 for their destruction, because their natural enemies, which 

 could not be caught because of the want of bait, multiplied 

 exceedingly, and devoured the very herrings which the laws 

 intended to protect. This was so to an enormous extent, as 

 a little calculation would show. The Commission frequently 

 opened cod and ling and examined the contents of their 

 stomachs, in which they frequently found seven to ten 

 herrings, which they had not begun to digest ; but allowing 

 a diet of two herrings a day to a cod, and allowing him to 

 live seven months in one year, fifty cod would catch as 

 many herrings as one fisherman could catch in a year. 

 Now there was no census of how many cod and ling 

 existed, but there was a census of how many cod and 

 ling were caught ; there were caught and salted last year 

 on the coast of Scotland, 115,513 cwt. of cod and ling. 

 Now about thirty fish went to a hundredweight, and from a 

 little calculation it would follow, that if the cod and ling* 

 which were salted had lived in the sea, and had not been 

 taken, they would have caught as many herrings as 

 69,000 fishermen. Now that was more than 20,000 beyond 

 all the fishermen who existed on those coasts, and, 

 therefore, those laws which protected the enemies of 



