BRITISH, COLONIAL AND OTHER CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 589 



numbers for the sake of feeding on the herring spawn. There is a 

 popular idea that all fish spawn is of a most delicate nature, and 

 quickly loses its vitality if taken out of the water for a short time, 

 or at all knocked about. This is probably true in those cases in 

 which the ova are separated from each other after exclusion, and 

 float freely in the water ; but it is not so with the spawn of the herring, 

 or probably of other fish whose ova are embedded in a tenacious 

 mucus. The experiments of Professor Allman and of Dr. M'Bain 

 have shown that herring spawn does not readily lose its vitality under 

 rough treatment, and may even be hatched out after having been 

 exposed to most unnatural conditions. Professor Allman states in 

 his Report to the Board of Fisheries at Edinburg that some stones 

 covered with spawn were taken from the sea by divers on the 1st 

 of March, 1862, not far from the Island of May. Some of this spawn 

 was forwarded to him and came into his possession after being kept 

 in only a small quantity of water for two entire days. He says : 



" With the view of determining whether development would pro- 

 ceed in confinement, I placed some of this spawn in a glass jar with 

 sea-water, exposing it in a window looking to the east. The several 

 stages of development were regularly passed through, and on the 

 15th of March the embryo was fully formed. Energetic movements 

 were performed by it in the ovum, and it seemed ready to escape into 

 the surrounding water. On the 16th some of the embryos had actu- 

 ally escaped, and were now about four-tenths of an inch in length. 

 They were of crystalline transparency, and swam about with great 

 activity and with the remains 01 the yolk, reduced now to a very small 

 volume, still adhering to them. The specific characters had, of course, 

 not yet become established, and the little fish afforded no further evi- 

 dence, beyond what we already possessed, to enable us to identify it 

 with the young of the herring." 



The young fish lived nearly a month in confinement, but the specific 

 characters were not even then sufficiently perfected to identity the 

 fish with certainty. There could be no reasonable doubt, however, 

 that the spawn was that of the herring. 



******* 



We will now proceed to give an account of the several valuable 

 fisheries carried on around the coasts of the British Islands, with 

 some details of the appliances in use, and the manner in which they 

 are worked. 



English -fisheries. On the coast of England the methods of fishing 

 in general use are more numerous than in the case of either Scotland 

 or Ireland, the fishing grounds are more extensive, and the total sup- 

 ply of fish obtained is larger and more varied in kind. The principal 

 modes of fishing are by the beam-trawl, the drift-net, the sean, the 

 stow-net, and lines. Their relative importance varies to some extent, 

 but trawling and drift-net fishing occupy by far the most conspicuous 

 positions, and lines come next in order. 



Trawling. The most characteristic mode of fishing is that known 

 in England as " trawling," or in Scotland as " beam-trawling," and 

 consists in towing, trailing, or trawling a flattened bag-net, often 

 100 feet long, over the bottom in such a manner as to catch those fish 

 especially which naturally keep close to or upon the ground. It is 

 very desirable that the name " trawl " should be restricted to this net, 



