202 THE RELATIONS OF THE STATE WITH 



herrings devoured year by year, day by day, hour by hour, 

 by their natural enemies the whales and porpoises, the 

 sea-birds, the cod, ling, hake, and other predaceous fish 

 with which the waters teem before we can arrive at any 

 numerical representation of the multitudes of herrings ex- 

 isting and reproducing their species in the seas around our 

 coasts. It has been calculated that the Scotch gannets 

 alone consume every year 37 per cent, more herrings than 

 all the Scotch fishermen catch in their nets, and that the 

 cod, ling, and hake, in the waters adjacent to the Scotch 

 coasts, destroy nearly thirty-seven times as many herrings 

 in a year as are taken by Scotch fishermen alone. These 

 computations take no count of the eggs contained in the 

 herrings thus consumed. 

 Complaints But there is hardly any mode of fishing that has not, at 



of one class of 



fishermen so me time or other, in different countries, and under 

 another. varying conditions, been objected to either on the ground 

 of undue destructiveness, or of interference with other 

 methods. As the drift-net fishermen complain of the 

 trawlers, so the seiners complain of the drift-nets, and the 

 drift-nets, again, on the west coast of Scotland, of the circle 

 trawls or seines ; the long-line fishermen denounce the 

 trawlers, and the hand-liners at any rate in America 

 object to the long lines or trawl lines as they are there 

 called. And so on to the end of the list. If all these 

 complaints were made the basis of repressive legislation, 

 we should soon be reduced to the necessity of attracting 

 our fish, Arion-like, by music to the markets, or of 

 practising the art of "tickling" in the deep sea. It is, 

 however, the duty of the State to keep a watchful eye on 

 the operations of the fishermen, and, while refusing to 

 hastily prohibit any new development of their art, to adjust 

 their differences that all branches of the industry may have 



