106 SEA FISHERIES 



of such a giant by one pound, it will represent a total 

 consumption of more than 20 tons, which, if valued at 

 a penny the pound, would be worth ^186. Cuttlefish 

 devour enormous quantities of fish inshore. They 

 sometimes appear in phalanxes so closely packed and so 

 voracious as to remind one of a swarm of locusts. I 

 desire only to make a passing mention of these destroyers, 

 by which I mean those which by their size, their muscular 

 power, and their rapacity form a kind of aristocracy of 

 plunderers which has nothing to fear from other creatures 

 and which, assured by reason of its strength of perpetual 

 impunity, has no vocation but that of securing victims. 

 These beasts of prey destroy and kill without even 

 restoring to man in the form of edible flesh the product 

 of their raids. I have said nothing of the tunnies or the 

 other Scombridae, because they are brigands on too small 

 a scale, whose life is often threatened by more powerful 

 enemies ; moreover, once they are brought to land they 

 may be transformed into good hard cash. 



Ill 



I must now pass on to the damage done by a creature 

 far more voracious than the porpoise or shark : I mean 

 the fisherman, and especially the small fisherman. In 

 virtue of the law of the least resistance, the small fisher- 

 man works again and again upon the same coastwise 

 shoals, until the day when their exhaustion no longer 

 enables him to draw a living from them. The Central 

 Committee of the Shipowners of France has published 

 some very interesting data in this connection. The 

 extension of steam trawling has been extremely rapid of 

 late years ; the number of trawlers has doubled in the 

 space of six years. But the field of operations has not 

 increased in proportion ; the trawlers, with a more 



