NATURE 



49 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1891. 



SCOTCH FISHERIES. 

 The Ninth Annual Report of the Fishery Board for 

 Scotland: being for the Year 1890. (Edinburgh: 

 Printed for Her Majesty's Stationery Office by 

 Neil and Co., 1891.) 



THIS, like the three preceding Reports, is published 

 in three parts: I. General Report; II. Report on 

 Salmon Fisheries; III. Scientific Investigations. 



The first part deals with such matters as the statistics 

 relating to fish landed and cured, Crown brands, number 

 of boats and men fishing, an account of the services 

 rendered by the various vessels employed in marine 

 police and fishery superintendence ; and generally, 

 reports on all business matters connected with this 

 section of the Board's work. The Shetland herring 

 fishing seems to have been particularly successful, and 

 to have attracted the usual number of English and Irish 

 boats, but the reports as to the number of Scotch boats 

 employed in this and long-line fishing tend to show that 

 there is a gradual decrease ; that the fishing does not 

 now seem to hold out such attractions to the rising 

 generation as it once did ; that probably over-competi- 

 tion is telling upon this as well as other industries. 



Th^ chief article in the se:ond part is the annual 

 report of Mr. Archibald Young, Inspector of Salmon 

 Fisheries for Scotland. It contains an account of the 

 fishings in the various rivers and lochs, with answers to 

 queries from district boards and local fishing authorities. 

 The question of the advisability of having a close-time 

 for trout is only casually mentioned ; and we cannot but 

 think that the Board would do well if, with all the facili- 

 ties at its command, it paid more careful attention to 

 such matters as the life-history and habits of the salmon. 

 Many points of great interest and usefulness have still to 

 be settled : for instance, we see no attempt to distinguish 

 between the different " runs " of fish in the various rivers, 

 their spawning periods, and subsequent movements. We 

 are not told whether, in the case of the salmon hatcheries, 

 any attention has been paid to the spawning of spring 

 run fish — probably a point of great importance in early 

 rivers. Might the Board not collect and publish much 

 valuable information as to the best means of keeping up 

 a steady supply of Salmonidae, by looking at the question 

 a little more with the interest of the naturalist and 

 sportsman .' A great deal of information is yet required 

 as to late and early spawning, migratory movements of 

 the young, rate of growth in the sea, food, «&c. To carry 

 out some of these inquiries might possibly require more 

 legal power than the Board possesses, but that the 

 Fishery Board is in a more favourable position than 

 other fishery authorities will be generally admitted. 

 These excellent reports as to the state of the salmon 

 fishings should be used more as a means for improving 

 that state than as the finished results of a year's 

 inspection. 



The third or scientific section of the Report is a 

 volume of nearly 430 pages. The word scientific has, 

 with the Fishery Board, a significance of its own : it 

 NO. I 151, VOL. 45] 



covers a multitude of subjects, but is on the whole a 

 convenient title. Part III. is subdivided into four sec- 

 tions. In the first (A.), after detailed tabulated results of 

 the work done by means of the cruiser Garland^ &c., 

 there are one or two papers deserving of special mention. 



A paper by Dr. Fullarton, " On the Suitability of Scot- 

 tish Waters for Oyster Culture," is an exhaustive account 

 of an expedition made by him to a great number of lochs 

 on the west coast, and shows clearly that some of these 

 lochs formerly produced an abundance of oysters, and 

 have had, within recent years, an abundant fall of spat on 

 their spawning beds. A table of temperatures and densities 

 is also given, which is valuable, but would certainly have 

 been much more so if the temperature readings had been 

 given in the common Fahrenheit instead of the Centi- 

 grade scale. The next paper is by the Secretary for 

 Scientific Investigations, Dr. T. Wemyss Fulton, on 

 "The Capture and Destruction of Immature Sea Fish.'' 

 The two most important parts of this paper deal with 

 the vitality of trawled fish, and the numbers of immature 

 fish taken by shrimpers. It is the first attempt ever 

 made to collect accurate data as to the proportion of 

 living and dead fish brought up in a trawl net worked 

 upon a certain kind of bottom for a certain length of 

 time. The information regarding the number of im- 

 mature fish taken by shrimpers has been collected in the 

 Solway Firth and on the Lancashire coast. The results 

 cannot but be surprising to very many. Taking the 

 Solway alone, Dr. Fulton's totals show that, in one year, 

 a single boat captures over 110,000 immature plaice. It 

 is gratifying to learn that in this district the fishermen 

 are, for once, provident, and return to the sea all these 

 little fishes, for the sum-total of all immature fish landed 

 in the year, comes to about 3,653,000. Dr. Fulton finds 

 that, owing to the short time the shrimp trawl remains at 

 the bottom — a sandy bottom — none of the young fish die. 

 This contradicts a statement very generally made by 

 those who denounce the system of fishing with beam 

 trawl, and also is exactly the reverse of the finding of 

 MM. Giard and Roussin in their report on this subject 

 to the French Minister of Marine— a report founded, 

 however, not on experimental observation, as Dr. 

 Fulton does not fail to point out. These observations 

 further seem to show that very young fish caught in 

 a shrimp trawl are much more tenacious of life than 

 older fish taken in a large net of similar construction, 

 and under similar conditions. This point, we think, is 

 of some importance, and has not been sufficiently taken 

 notice of. It bears on the question of size of mesh and 

 destruction of small fish taken. 



The biological section opens with a long paper, " On 

 the Food of Fishes," by W. Ramsay Smith, B.Sc, and, 

 following this, another paper by Dr. Wemyss Fulton, on 

 " The Comparative Fecundity of Sea Fishes." In this 

 paper the author first deals with the proportional weight 

 of the ova compared to the rest of the body. This naturally 

 leads him into the somewhat complicated subject of the 

 proportion of eggs ripe at the spawning-time of certain 

 fishes which do not shed their spawn en masse. He finds 

 that in such cases it would often be an impossibility for 

 the body of the fish to contain all the eggs it naturally 

 produces in an enlarged and ripe condition. Taking 



