Dec. 14, 1876] 



NATURE 



135 



interesting style. It is a valuable feature that Mr. Barkley's 

 sojourn in Turkey was not made during recent events, 

 and his narrative is not written with a view to advocate 

 one side or the other in the present unhappy conflict. He 

 saw the Bulgarians in what may be called their normal 

 condition, and had no reason to be prejudiced for or 

 against any section of them. He saw much to condemn 

 and a good deal to praise both in Christians and Mo- 

 hammedans, but little that was praiseworthy in Turkish 

 officials, "from the Governor- General to the hangman." 

 The work contains much information on the Bulgarians, 

 their characters and ways, and will be found both inte- 

 resting and instructive. 



The District of Bdkar^atij j its History and Statistics. 



By H. Beveridge, B.C.S. (London : Triibner and Co., 



1876.) 

 The publication of this work is somewhat opportune, 

 for under the reformed, if not improved, spelling of the 

 title, our readers will no doubt recognise the district of 

 Backergunge, which, with other districts at the mouth 

 of the Hooghly, was recently overwhelmed by one of the 

 most disastrous cyclone-waves on record. Mr. Beveridge 

 is magistrate and collector of the district, and as such 

 has had a good opportunity of becoming acquainted with 

 it. He has evidently also read a great deal on the sub- 

 ject, and the result is a work which ought to take a good 

 place as a local history. Mr. Beveridge describes the 

 physical features of the district, its antiquities and early 

 history, the pergunnahs and sunderbur.ds, treats of Go- 

 vernment estates, land tenures, the inhabitant?, produc- 

 tions, and manufactures. The second part refers to the 

 several departments of the administration, education, &c. 

 This district, from its low-lying position at the top of the 

 Bay of Bengal, has been peculiarly subject to the inrush 

 of the wave which accompanies cyclones. Until the re- 

 cent catastrophe the great event in the history of the 

 district was an inundation, evidently caused by a cyclone- 

 wave, which occurred in June, 1822. According to con- 

 temporary account, 100,000 persons lost their lives, and 

 as many cattle ; but this must pale before the recent 

 catastrophe, and henceforth October 31, 1876, will be the 

 black-letter day in Bdkarganj. Mr. Beveridge's book 

 will be found to contain a great deal of really valuable 

 information, and if every district in India were treated in 

 a similar manner, we should possess a library of informa- 

 tion of the greatest value. The volume contains a good 

 map of the district. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. NettJier can he tmdertake to return, 

 or to correspond zvitJi the writers of, rejected manuscripts. 

 No 7iotice is taken of anonymous communications i\ 



Sea Fisheries 



Prof. Newton has sent you a long reply to my criticism of 

 bis Address to the British Association ; and although it is 

 exceedingly inconvenient to me, as I believe it is also to Jiim, to 

 continue the discussion at the present time, I must ask you for 

 space, as soon as you can spare it, to point out as briefly as I can, 

 how little progress my friend has yet made in his subject. He 

 ■was good enough to show me his reply before he sent it to you, 

 PTid I then told him I should have to meet him on every point 



it. Nevertheless he sent it for publication, and as the subject 

 a;jpears to me to be one on which the public should not be mis- 

 led, I am compelled to ask space for some comments upon it. 



The Minutes of Evidence given before the Commission, con- 

 ■^ting of 61,831 questons and answers rather frighten him, and 

 c turns to the Index for help. Without a careful study of the 

 evidence the Index is practically useless for my friend's purpose, 

 as I told him. And some knowledge of the habits of sea-fish will 

 be exceedingly valuable in enabling it to be understood. The 

 Index is not ^precis. There is intrinsic evidence in Prof. Newton's 

 reply that he framed it, I think I may say solely from the Index, 

 and not from the evidence ; his tables of increase and decrease, 



and calculations of the number of questions and answers relat- 

 ing to each, are obviously so, and the value of his arguments 

 may be judged of accordingly. To show what his tables are 

 worth I will take two or three entries in them for examination. 

 " Bream" is the firs% and that fish is said to have increased. 

 This is the only entry relating to bream in the whole Index. 

 Bream are common fish on very many parts of our coast ; they 

 often congregate in large numbers, sometimes on one part, 

 sometimes on another ; they happened to have been unusually 

 numerous off Hastings just before the Commissioners were there, 

 and the fishermen accordingly recorded the increase. But there 

 is not the slightest reason for believing bream were then more 

 abundant than usual on our coasts generally than the reverse. 

 "Brill" has two entries, both in the decrease column. In 

 one case the evidence is that of fishermen in .Start Bay, who 

 used the scan nets within half a mile of the beach, and who 

 were furious against the Brixham trawlers for sometimes working 

 in the Bay ; the said trawlers, up to that time, and for the twelve 

 years since, finding no falling off in the supply of brill. The 

 other case was at Liverpool, where brill was mentioned, among 

 other fish, by the Inspector of the Fish Market, as having dimi- 

 nished. Pie made the remarkable statement that not i per cent, 

 of sea-fish of all kinds was brought to the market in 1864 com- 

 pared with what had been taken there twenty years before. As 

 the number ot fishing-boats had increased during that interval, 

 and the price of fish was, if anything, rather less, owing to the 

 large supplies sent by railway from the east coast direct to the 

 fishmongers'! shops, and not going into the market, it is very 

 clear that if the fishermen were getting a living from the 

 I per cent, in 1864, they must have been making at least lOO 

 times as much money twenty years before, which is an absurdity. 

 " Cod and ling " come next. Here my friend had better look 

 to his arithmetic. There is no doubt that cod, and haddock 

 especially had fallen off at many of the inshore fishing grounds. 

 They are both species which have fluctuated very much in num- 

 bers in many places, the haddock in particular making its 

 appearance in abundance for a season or two, and then becoming 

 very scarce ; or they have left places where they were abundant 

 for years together, and again unexpectedly returned. The last 

 report I had from the north-east coast of England, just three 

 years ago, was that the line fishermen were doing well, and their 

 only complaint was of the scarcity of mussels for bait. But it 

 was along this coast that the greai outcry against the trawlers 

 arose in 1863, which led to the issue of the Sea Fisheries Com- 

 mission ; and a great deal of the evidence given there was such 

 as might have been expected under the circumstances. 



It will be difficult to treat the next entry seriously, but I 

 will try to do so. In a table professing to show the increase or 

 decrease of the fishes with which our markets are supplied, 

 he notes one particular kind as having decreased, and he 

 counts the two instances as helping to prove that our sea 

 fisheries are on the high road to ruin. Those persons who have 

 even but a very slight acquaintance with sea fishing will be rather 

 surprised to hear that the fish whose end is approaching is nothing 

 less than the "dogfish !" one whose utter extermination would 

 gladden the hearts of the fishermen from the Shetlands to the 

 Land's End, and from Dingle to Dover. Hordes of these pre- 

 datory and mischievous fishes roam round the coasts of the 

 British Islands ; sometimes they swarm in one place, sometimes 

 in another. In the herring season the destruction they have 

 caused to both fish and nets has been such that the fishing where 

 they were has been almost entirely stopped for nights together, 

 and the long-liners also suffer severely from them. They are 

 said to have seriously interrupted the Yarmouth herring fishery 

 this year ; and the ofiicial report for 1875 from the coastguard at 

 Killibegs, in Ireland, states that the dogfish had so much in- 

 creased that Donegal Bay had, on several occasions, been appa- 

 rently cleared of fish by them, and that the nets were constantly 

 full of them. It may be well said that happy is the country 

 whose dogfish are decreasing ! Would that I could believe they 

 were becoming scarce in our own ! 



Prof. Newton has evidently been taken in by a heading in the 

 Index, thus — "Dogfish, consumption of." The explanation is 

 as amusing as it is simple. In Morecambe Bay some of the 

 fishermen catch the dogfish, and after skinning it and removing 

 the head and tail, send it under the name of " Darwen Salmon " 

 to the Blackburn and Preston weavers, who are the only persons 

 who will buy it. This is the only case I ever heard of in which 

 the hated dogfish was not knocked on the head and throwm 

 overboard whenever there was a chance of doing so. 



Had I space at command I could enlarge on these tables, but 



