540 FISHERIES AND FISHERMEN 



undertaking of which it is an infinitesimal portion, if we 

 omitted to draw attention both to the facts themselves 

 and yet more particularly to the remedies which, as a 

 matter of history, the Commissioners proposed. For enquiry 

 is good, discussion is excellent, illustration is admirable, but 

 the only fruitful and satisfying result of history is improve- 

 ment in administrative action. 



The proposals adopted by the Commissioners were 

 simple, and likely to be effectual. They consisted princi- 

 pally in the recommendation of four important measures : 

 the issuing of a certificate for captains after passing an easy 

 kind of examination specially adapted for their require- 

 ments ; the imposition of an obligation to keep a rough 

 kind of log ; the compulsory requirement of a declaration 

 as to any death which may have occurred during the trip ; 

 and the endowment of the officer of the Board of Trade 

 with parental authority in the interests of the apprentices. 

 The first and last of these suggestions, when taken together, 

 seem especially suited to effect their purpose, since they 

 create an authority sufficient to deal with the master of a 

 ship, and an easy means by which that authority may be 

 exercised. 



But the space we have measured grows immense, and 

 the time approaches to loose the neck of our smoking 

 steeds. Yet one more flight awaits us, for there is still 

 one kind of fishery or shall we say a dozen kinds of 

 which we have made no mention. Down from the 

 heights of the Olympus where the Commissioners sit 

 enthroned in Whitehall Gardens, let us dive at a plunge, 

 like Thetis of the gleaming foot, swift as the flash of 

 thought into the azure depths of the Sicilian sea. A 

 thousand forms of strange beauty are aro md us ; a million 

 insects are at work, building up, as they have done through 



