CHAP. XL] DOUBTS AS TO FORMER ABUNDANCE. 479 



maturity, and at what age a codfish or a turbot becomes repro- 

 ductive ; nor can our economists do more than guess the per- 

 centage of eggs that ripen into fish, or the number of these 

 that are likely to reach our tables as food. 



As has been mentioned in a previous chapter of this 

 volume, the supply of haddocks and other Gadidse was once 

 so plentiful around the British coasts, that a short line, with 

 perhaps a score of hooks, frequently replenished with bait, 

 would be quite sufficient to capture a few thousand fish. The 

 number of hooks was gradually extended, till now they are 

 counted by the thousand, the fishermen having to multiply 

 the means of capture as the fish become less plentiful. About 

 forty years ago the percentage of fish to each line was 

 very considerable. Eight hundred hooks would take about 

 750 fish ; but now, with a line studded with 4000 hooks, the 

 fisherman sometimes do not take 100 fish. It was recently 

 stated by a correspondent of the John tf Groat Journal, 

 a newspaper published in the fishing town of Wick, that a 

 fish-curer there contracted some years ago with the boats 

 for haddocks at 3s. 6d. per hundred, and that at that low 

 price the fishing yielded the men from 20 to 40 each season ; 

 but that now, although he has offered the fishermen 12s. a 

 hundred, he cannot procure anything like an adequate supply. 



As the British sea-fisheries afford remunerative employ- 

 ment to a large body of the population, and offer a favourable 

 investment for capital, it is surely time that we should know 

 authoritatively whether or not there be truth in the falling-off in 

 our supplies of herring and other white fish. At one of the 

 Glasgow fish-merchants' annual soirees, held a year or two 

 ago it was distinctly stated that all kinds of fish were less 

 abundant now than in former years, and that in proportion to 

 the means of capture the result was less. Mr. Methuen 

 reiterated such opinions again and again. "I reckon our 

 fisheries," said this enterprising fish-merchant on one occasion, 



