GREA T BRITAIN. 49 



its way through this net carries a portion of the slack, small- 

 meshed middle wall with it through the large mesh of the 

 outer net or wall on the opposite side, and thus becomes 

 trammelled. 



The trawl, or beam-trawl, is that mode of fishing which 

 is most important in supplying varied kinds of fish to our 

 markets, and which, as at present carried on, is most injuri- 

 ous to our fisheries. The trawl fishermen, being permitted 

 at all times and seasons to capture whatever they please, 

 destroy and throw overboard large quantities of the young 

 of some of the best of our sea fishes, and are occasioning a 

 rapid diminution of our flat fishes. Some authors have 

 pointed out that, as the eggs of the majority of marine fishes 

 float,* they could not be deleteriously affected by trawling. 

 But they overlook the fact that fishermen have two mean- 

 ings for spawn, either the eggs of fish or the small fry, and 

 it is these last that trawlers and shrimpers, and the numer- 

 ous other forms of small meshed nets employed along the 

 coast are accused of destroying in enormous numbers, a fact 

 any unprejudiced person may readily satisfy himself upon. 

 It may be difficult to obtain impartial evidence from fisher- 

 men on this score, the drifters and line fishermen being so 

 strongly at variance with the trawlers, by whom they con- 



* Mr. Holdsworth observes that the eggs of the cod and haddock 

 float, and continues, " if such be the case with these two species of the 

 same genus, there is hardly room to doubt that the very closely allied 

 species, such as the whiting, coalfish, pollack, hake and tush, have 

 precisely the same habit of spawning at the surface." Although such 

 guess-work may prove correct, I would point out, that proper investiga- 

 tions ought to be made, as the eggs of the herring sink, while those of 

 the closely allied pilchard float. And some forms in which eggs float, 

 as the Belone, or gar-fish, have tendrils given off from the ova which 

 attach them to any contiguous object, whether such object floats or 

 whether it sinks. 



VOL. I. E. I. E 



