GREA T BRITAIN. 275 



ignore the warning of practical fishermen, and appear to 

 consider (as did the Oyster Commissioners of old) that 

 there are as good things in the sea as ever came out ; 

 while the idea of diminishing any supply from thence, 

 they hold, can only be the views of such as know nothing 

 of the ocean nor of its contents. 



I would here venture to suggest as worthy of considera- 

 tion a minute investigation of how these garvie fisheries arc 

 carried on from the commencement of October to the end 

 of January ; the proportion of herrings captured to sprats, 

 and what becomes of the captures. It would also be very 

 desirable that such an inquiry should extend into the 

 question of whether or no the cessation of the inshore 

 herring fisheries has been coincident with the extension of 

 the garvie fisheries. 



Off the coast of Norway the mode in which herring fish- 

 ing is pursued is when the fish have entered one of the 

 large inlets so common along the coast to stretch a net 

 across the entrance and capture the entire school, fishing 

 out at sea as off the Scottish and English coast being 

 either unknown or else but little engaged in. Last year, 

 1882, the herrings appear to have been abundant off the 

 coast, but as a rule to have ceased entering the inlets ; as a 

 consequence the captures have been comparatively few. 

 The reason given is that of late years the whale fishery has 

 been most successfully prosecuted, so much so that few 

 cetaceans are now to be seen, while it is believed that the 

 chief cause of driving herrings into inlets was to escape 

 from the whales. The result is that petitions are being for- 

 warded that no whales be killed within a certain distance 

 of Norway. The terror of the nets in the inlets thus 

 appears to have been less than the fear of the whales in 

 the ocean ; remove the whales, and one of the chief terrors, 



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