FACTORS OF DESTRUCTION 107 



numerous fleet and a more perfect equipment, have con- 

 tinually exploited the same old fishing-grounds. The 

 Bay of Calvados, the small bays of Brittany and the 

 hollows off the coast of Charente, such as the Pirlon 

 Hole, have been worked for centuries, and are becoming 

 impoverished. 



There is scarcely any method of fishing which has 

 not to some extent been responsible for the impoverish- 

 ment of the inshore fishing-grounds. The employment 

 of gunpowder and dynamite, and of toxic substances such 

 as chloride of lime and other drugs, which are used in 

 the Provenal seine fisheries, is, it goes without saying, 

 most pernicious. 1 To such factors as these we must 

 add effluents of soap-works and factories, which have 

 poisoned certain parts of the Bay of Marseilles, and the 

 outfalls of sewers. The stake-nets ought to be destroyed, 

 as from time immemorial they have captured swarms of 

 bream, bass, gurnards, caplin, and conger. Fishers with 

 the curtain-net at the mouths of rivers uselessly destroy 

 myriads of young fish. In 1890-91, writes M. Roche, 

 the fishermen of Esnandes offered in the market of La 

 Rochelle quantities of little soles, quite unsaleable, which 

 one could only use as manure. In November, 1890, 

 there were taken near the coast, in the neighbourhood 

 known as La Fosse, soles of which three hundred pairs 

 were required to fill a basket, and which were less than 

 4 inches long. The immoderate use of the seine produces 

 similar results almost everywhere, but particularly near 

 Auray and Quiberon. In the neighbourhood of the 



1 M. Hanriot, in 1907, succeeded in extracting from the Telphrosia 

 Vogeli a toxic substance which he called Telphrosine. If a handful 

 of this substance is thrown into the water, fish become stupefied 

 and float to the surface. A description of the nets cited above will 

 be found in Chapter III. of Part II. of this book. 



