242 



with regard to Lobster fisheries, Professor Huxley had 

 himself within the last year recommended that very 

 stringent regulations should be enforced on the coast of 

 Norfolk, in the hope that, all the circumstances being very 

 favourable, some general idea might be arrived at as to the 

 effect of restrictive legislation, whether it was really beneficial 

 or not Coming back to the subject of the Paper or. 

 rather to the discussion upon it, for he regretted he had not 

 been able to attend early enough to listen to the Paper it 

 appeared to him they should walk before they ran, for 

 before taking up difficult and intricate systems of ponds 

 and boxes, and apparatus of various kinds, a great deal 

 might be done by inducing the owners of fish-ponds to 

 treat those fish-ponds exactly as they found them ; * not 



* I regret that Mr. Fryer was not present in time to hear my paper 

 because he would then have seen that my object in advocating coarse- 

 fish culture is, that we can only by this means re-stock the rivers, 

 canals, lakes, ponds, &c., which have been depleted by unfair fishing, 

 over-fishing, and poaching. It will not much assist the thousands of 

 working-men anglers if those gentlemen who have ponds cultivate 

 them again in the way their ancestors did, as referred to in my Paper ; 

 how will that help the many thousands of club anglers ? They find it 

 usually most difficult to get permission to fish in a private pond, which 

 is often not worth fishing ; it would be more hopeless still if the owner 

 of the water had spent money on it in cultivating it. Nor will I 

 admit that the Lund-box, the hurdle, and the system of ponds I 

 described can in any way be fairly designated " intricate." Their 

 simplicity is obvious, for they merely aid nature. Finally, it will be 

 seen Mr. Fryer recommends the German pond system, which in my 

 Paper I had referred to as being by far the best way in which to 

 cultivate coarse fish of all kinds, where some primary expense was not 

 an object (see p. 21 $et seq!). Of course I do not suppose Mr. Fryer 

 intended to knock my skittles down merely to set them up again 

 himself in this way ; but I think it was a pity he deprecated my 

 suggestions without having heard what I had said about them, and 

 then proposed as a substitute the very thing I had advocated most 

 strongly except that my pond farm would be less " intricate " than 

 those he proposed. I proposed one pond for one kind of fish ; his 

 suggestion would require three ponds for each kind of fish. R. B. M. 



