334 ST ANDREWS AND SCIENTIFIC 



namely, that this amount of trawling in the closed areas 

 showed a diminution in the fish-fauna from first to last, was 

 a very large conclusion to draw from very slender premises. 

 The mistake was pointed out at once by the scientific expert 

 of the Trawling Commission in his Resources of the Sea, though 

 a number of workers new to fishery investigations at Ply- 

 mouth, and some other writers attempted to support the 

 theory of the ' impoverishment ' of the sea. The view has 

 been, however, generally abandoned, and a return made to the 

 St Andrews views, even the International Scientific Workers 

 having refrained from giving prominence to the wholly 

 unjustifiable conclusion that the world's supply of sea fish 

 might be endangered by the operations of man. The plan of 

 the International Investigations conducted for nearly ten years 

 in the North Sea, was chiefly arranged by certain British 

 representatives, who had expressed very strong views as to the 

 alleged impoverishment of the sea ; but, having apparently 

 receded from that position, these marine investigations, cost- 

 ing up to the present time the large amount of 60,000 or 

 70,000, have confirmed merely what was already pronounced 

 to be scientific fact, and proved to be so by the investigations 

 of a quarter of a century ago. 



The labours of the band of workers carrying on original 

 researches under the stimulus of the present Professor of 

 Zoology in the University, who has also been from the com- 

 mencement the head of the St Andrews Marine Laboratory, 

 have yielded results so important that no fishery memoir of 

 any note, no work on the life-history of marine fishes in any 

 country, has failed to make allusion, and usually lengthy allu- 

 sion, to the remarkable pioneer work carried on for thirty 

 years at St Andrews, and still actively pursued there. Even 

 when unacknowledged, it is known that much of the best 

 work in England, Ireland, Germany, Canada, South Africa, 

 and other countries has been based on the famous St Andrews 

 researches. It is true that, now and then, some report or 



