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were mischievous, and tended to no good. If he understood 

 aright the observations of the last speaker, he said the 

 regulations in Scotland had no effect on the herring fishery. 

 There had been restrictions, and the Chairman had made 

 some very important observations with regard to them. 

 Dr. Day said they were not enforced, and, therefore, they 

 had no effect. Well, if they found the herring fisheries of 

 Scotland increased in the vast proportions that they had 

 done for so many years, it was the strongest argument that 

 the restrictions placed upon them by the Legislature were 

 of no avail, and did no good. How far, if they had been 

 enforced, they might have done any good, of course no one 

 could say. It was most important that science should be 

 brought to bear on this question, and should be aided by 

 practical experience. When they had arrived at the time 

 when scientific men could say that certain restrictions should 

 be placed on deep-sea fishing, then it would be time for the 

 Legislature to step in, but until that day came it would 

 be only mischievous to cripple the industry of a country by 

 imposing such restrictions in the absence of that knowledge 

 which they all admitted they were deficient in. The great 

 deficiency of statistics had been referred to especially with 

 regard to Ireland, and he regretted very much to say that 

 the statistics of fisheries in Ireland were miserably defective. 

 It was very important that those statistics should be col- 

 lected, so that they might ascertain whether the improved 

 modes of capture and the greater distance to which the 

 boats went were injurious to the fisheries. Nothing was 

 more interesting to him than something which he had seen 

 in the Exhibition, which might develop the fisheries to an 

 enormous extent. He alluded to a mode adopted on the 

 great lakes in Canada, by which a steamer, while moving 

 on, kept paying out one net, and at the same time hauled 

 VOL. VI. C. H 



