2 HISTORY OF HOWIETOUN. 



now in use. In this manner the brand is directly beneficial to 

 every man, woman, and child employed in the fishing industries. 

 It is true the English sea fisheries have not received the same 

 attention as those off the Scotch coast, but the northern portions 

 of them were, until 1881, under the jurisdiction of the Scotch 

 Board. 



It is difficult to persuade the public that the harvest of the 

 waters is won by very similar means to the harvest of the land. 

 Harbours and submarine cables occupy the same position with 

 regard to fisheries as farm buildings and roads to the land farm ; 

 and in improving harbour accommodation and promoting the 

 extension of telegraphic communication (in order that supplies of 

 salt may be sufficient for curing at every station, and that the 

 boats may have the earliest information of the movements of the 

 shoals of fish) the Fishery Board for Scotland is a fish-cultural 

 department in the fullest sense of the word. Fish-culture means 

 increasing the food of the people, and it has been cruelly wronged 

 by the attempts so frequently made to persuade the world that a 

 little ingenious apparatus, and a few buckets of water, are its 

 principal essentials. It is impossible to separate entirely sea 

 fisheries from those of fresh water, since the sea is the pasture of 

 the most important Salmonina, namely, the S. solar, the S. trutta, 

 and the Osmerus eperlanus. The life-history of the two former is 

 probably intimately connected with the movements of Clupeidce. 



To the useful work performed by the old Board of white 

 fisheries on the national farm of our sea fisheries which is none 

 the less a farm requiring careful attention and constant super- 

 vision, because the rich pastures of the North Sea are tenanted in 

 common with other nations the present Fishery Board for Scot- 

 land has added an improved system for the collection of the most 

 exhaustive statistics. It has undertaken a carefully considered 

 scheme for determining by actual experiment the effect of trawl- 

 ing on different portions of the coast ; the portions reserved for 

 experiment being sufficiently large to give approximately accu- 

 rate results without interfering needlessly with the trawling 

 industry. 



