628 



NATURE 



[January 13, 192 1 



Letters to the Editor. 



(The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions 

 expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to 

 return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manu- 

 scripts intended /or this or any other part of NATURE. No 

 notice is taken of anonymous communications.] 



Science and Fisheries. 



The two letters from Prof. Mcintosh and Mr. H. G. 

 Maurice published in Nature of December 30 last are 

 of great interest. The second points out that an 

 arrangement is now in operation by which the 

 scientific staffs of the English, Scottish, and Irish 

 Fishery Departments are arranging to meet at regular 

 intervals to frame their scientific programmes; and 

 the first refers to the responsibility of the Depart- 

 ments " in selecting for the task scientific men whose 

 training and ability specially fit them for the com- 

 plex, work." 



It may not be generally known that the real con- 

 trolling authorities so far as fisheries research is 

 concerned are the Development Commission and the 

 Treasury. The Development Commission considers 

 all applications from any of the three Departments 

 for funds to carry out the researches that may be 

 proposed. This consideration is not merely an office 

 matter, for the proposed researches are considered by 

 a special Committee, mainly of scientific men, pre- 

 sided over by Mr. W. B. Hardy. This Committee has 

 already presented several excellent reports, and 

 generally fresh applications for funds are referred to 

 it. While the Development Commission is thus 

 responsible for the work to be undertaken by the 

 different Departments, the Treasury is responsible for 

 the supply of properly trained scientific men to carrv 

 out the actual work. The real onus is on the 

 Treasury, for the payment of all men in the service 

 of the State is reviewed by this Department when 

 providing funds for their payment. We have, on one 

 hand, a body expert both as to the nature of the 

 work proposed and as to the supply of men properlv 

 trained to carry out this work; and, on the other, a 

 body with no qualifications whatever to review the 

 work and no special knowledge as to the conditions of 

 pay in different branches of science, especially in bio- 

 logical sciences. It appears to me that the present 

 arrangement is not businesslike, and would not be 

 tolerated in any commercial firm. 



The Fishery Departments of the three countries 

 certainly have progressed to a verv considerable 

 extent, and it is surely a peculiarlv favourable time 

 for a further step in progress. It is generally agreed 

 that the research in fisheries of the three kingdoms 

 should be carried out on one scheme ; at present the 

 Departments of Scotland and England are without 

 any scientific directors. Surely the time has come 

 when the scientific work of the three countries in 

 respect to fisheries should be placed under one Director 

 of Fishery Investications and the three separate 

 scientific staffs should be merged into one. The con- 

 trol of this Scientific Fisheries Division could obviouslv 

 not be placed in any one of the Fishery Departments, 

 and would have to be assumed by the Development 

 Commission. The latter could act through an 

 Advisory Committee on which the three Departments 

 could be represented, if it is' deemed advisable to do 

 so. The Committee might also contain representa- 

 tives of the different branches of the industry. There 

 '* would be no competition between the three countries 

 for such scientific men as are available or in respect 

 to the mere numbers of their so-called scientific em- 

 ployees. The one body would be responsible for the 

 work and for the human material necessary to carry 

 out that work ; the result, I venture to suggest, 

 would be greatly to the interest of the country and 

 NO. 2672, VOL. 106] 



would ensure good value for the money spent. 

 The fisheries form an industry and the public are 

 the consumers; the staffs which exist to protect and 

 develop the interests of both should obviously be 

 under one head. 



My own experience of the three Fishery Depart- 

 ments of England, Scotland, and Ireland and of the 

 industry has been altogether pleasant and decidedlv 

 "happy," and I am under obligations to the Develop- 

 ment Commission as well. I resigned from the 

 English Department on November 30 last because the 

 Treasury declined to give us a staff of such a nature 

 as I deemed necessary to carrv out the work pro- 

 posed. The Treasury, in fact,' took from me the 

 possibility of recommending to the Fisheries Secre- 

 tary a staff capable of doing this work; it offered 

 a lower rate of pay than the higher grade of the 

 Civil Service, with a prospect of promotion from 

 the lowest grade to the next at the age of forty-three 

 or thereabouts, whereas the Civil Service has a 

 prospect of similar promotion about ten years vounger. 

 The Treasury instituted a scale of pav in all'the fout 

 grades of the Scientific Division of the Ministry dis- 

 tinctly lower than that of a higher grade of the' Civil 

 Service; in fact, it proposed to create a fresh 

 grading of inferior rank, with verv indeterminate 

 prospects of promotion. Apparently the Treasury 

 was doing this on general grounds — the inferiority of 

 scientific men to the ordinary Civil Servants employed 

 by the State ! It certainly could not have had the 

 advice of any biologist as 'to the supply of the men 

 available for the work. 



What is required in fisheries is the scientific man 

 who is broadly trained in the relationship of fish to 

 the chemical and physical conditions of the water 

 in which they live, to the biological conditions of 

 the^ organisms with which they are associated, and 

 ultimately to the biological conditions in relation to 

 the floating plant-life upon which all water-living 

 animals to a considerable degree depend. The suc- 

 cessful fishery investigator must be, as it were, a 

 "medical man" who has fish as his speciality in- 

 stead of human beings ; he has to consider every 

 factor in respect to the living fish just as the practi- 

 tioner has to consider every factor in respect to his 

 patients ; he must even know something of statistics. 

 The number of such men is small, but they may be 

 "created" if there are openings for them. The 

 training involves man-- years of hard study, but no 

 amount of training will compensate for an absence of 

 the requisite ability to visualise and correlate all the 

 different factors that are involved in studying the 

 living fi.sh. 



The men who give up their time and thought to 

 such a study put themselves outside the branches of 

 science that are recognised in our different universi- 

 ties. B\ so doing they renounce the beaten tracks of 

 ordinary scientific promotion and their prospects 

 therein. The responsible heads of scientific depart- 

 ments in universities cannot recommend their best 

 men to do this unless they see adequate possibilities 

 for their future. By the creation of a single strong 

 Division for the scientific investigation of British 

 fisheries under the Development Commission, ade- 

 quately paid and with prospects of promotion at 

 least equal to those in any university of the king- 

 dom, there would be a great inducement to the best 

 men to undertake this work ; its yer\' complexity 

 would attract them. .\s it is, there are three Scientific 

 Divisions of Fisheries under three different Depart- 

 ments the positions and prospects in which are not such 

 that the best men can be recommended to them ; these 

 three Divisions at present havp, T venture to suggest, 

 sufficient first-class men to fill adequately the higher 



