378 A Pica for Sea Fisheries. Cli.UT. XXVI. 



perhaps, also by capturing the predatory fish, which are less fertile 

 as a rule, than those on which they prey, and consequently suffer 

 most by equal capture.* If one trawler is known to be making a 

 good catch, other vessels do not avoid that ground as fished over, 

 but follow over the same ground by 'preference. There are other 

 methods of fishing also which, being specially applied to the 

 capture of predatory fish, are, in their results, specially beneficial 

 to the fishery generally. 



16. A friend objects to this calculation, saying that because five 

 boats were employed, the total should be divided by five. I say, as 

 well might you divide the produce of an acre of land by the 

 number of men it takes to reap it. The present question is not the 

 reaper but the acre ; to the reaper we will come hereafter. 



17. However, it is not my intention to rest at all on this 

 special night's fishing, which shows 10G tons per acre per annum. 

 I only put it fen ward as the Commissioners have done, just to 

 show that the previous calculation of 52 tons per acre per annum 

 is not an exceptional, but an average one, on the most frequented 

 fishing grounds. On the contrary, I shall further subject even this 

 average calculation to liberal reductions, as will be seen hereafter. 



18. Nor will I turn aside to calculate the cost of fishing an 

 acre of water so as to show the profits of sea fishing. Exact data 

 are wanting. It is enough for our present purpose, the feeding of 

 the masses, to adduce that the Commissioners thought it highly 

 profitable, as will be seen in the next paragraph : and this their 

 conclusion is based on ample grounds found in the body of their 

 report. 



19. But before passing on to my own calculations, I will quote 

 the next paragraph, the conclusion which the Commissioners them- 

 selves draw from the facts which they have arrived at : 



" When we consider the amount of care that has been bestova id 

 " on the improvement of agriculture, the national societies which are 

 " established for promoting it, and the scientific knowledge and en- 

 " gineering skill which have been enlisted in its aid, it seems strange 

 ' that the sea fisheries have hitherto attracted so little of the public 

 " attention. There ate few means of enterprise that present belter 



* In tlic Si m I'i-luT\ Report for Great Britain, 1879, predator] Befa ar u- 



mated, If I n member rightly, to destroy fifty times :i* many li^li :is man does. 



