46 BRITISH SEA-FISHERIES 



that time nothing was known about the eggs or spawn 

 of the food-fishes. Even while the Commission was 

 sitting, in 1864, Professor G. O. Sars for the first time 

 discovered and described the floating ova of the cod, 

 and succeeded in artificially fertilizing the ova and 

 rearing the young. The following year he did the 

 same with the mackerel ; and Professor Malm of Gote- 

 borg about this time obtained and fertilized the eggs 

 of the flounder. Since that time we have found out 

 the eggs of all the valuable food-fish, and artificially 

 hatched most of them. But the facts about the cod's 

 eggs appear to have been unknown to the Commission. 

 They had to rely upon such data as the return of fish 

 carried by the railway companies, the current prices 

 of fish in the market, the return on the capital invested, 

 and the impressions of leading merchants and fisher- 

 men. They had little scientific knowledge of sea- 

 fisheries to guide them, for the knowledge scarcely 

 existed ; and they had no trustworthy statistics. 

 Nevertheless, as was usually the case when Professor 

 Huxley was concerned, they arrived at very definite 

 conclusions conclusions which subsequent writers 

 have felt to be, for the time when they were formu- 

 lated, sound. There was no doubt that at that date, 

 both in Scotland and in England, the fisheries were 

 improving ; the number and the value of the fish landed 

 at our fishing-ports were annually increasing; the 

 capital invested in the industry yielded a satisfactory 

 return. 



The Commissioners strongly opposed the bounty 

 system, which had done so much to build up the 

 herring- fisheries in Scotland. They recommended 

 the policy of opening the ports and the territorial 

 waters to foreign seamen. They regarded the sea 

 as free to all, just as the International Congress of 

 Lawyers in the autumn of 1906 declared the air to be. 

 They found no reason to believe that the supply of 



