214 THE RELATIONS OF THE STATE WITH 



their mysterious migrations, instead of waiting helplessly 

 for their return, and being obliged eventually to abandon 

 their own homes ! 



Whether scientific observation, encouraged and supported 

 by the State, as an intimate branch of its organisation for the 



sins and vices of the inhabitants of the coast, our tax-gatherers, each 

 one in his district, shall see to it that people in the fishing stations 

 lead good and Christian lives ; that there is preaching every Sunday, 

 and people are exhorted to lead a godly life, so that God may be 

 moved by the prayers of good Christians to extend His blessings to us 

 also in future." Among other reasons it has been contended that, 

 during the last great Bohuslan fishing, the seine nets drove away the 

 herrings from the coast, the reason being, as alleged, that the herring 

 shows great terror of the seine, from which it tries to escape by rushing 

 through, under, or over, the net. But this peculiarity is observed 

 in Cornwall, in the case of the pilchards, which is, or at any rate was, 

 until very recently, principally captured by the seine ; and there is no 

 reason why the pilchard should not be driven permanently from the 

 Cornish coast, through the use of this net, quite as easily as the herring 

 from the Swedish coast. But this has never yet been shown to be the 

 case. In support of the allegation that the seine net was the ruin of 

 the last great Bohuslan fishery, it is urged that the nets were generally 

 used in the daytime during the first half of the period, while during 

 the latter half they could only be used by night. Even supposing 

 that there were no reasons, such as the greater clearness of the water 

 in the daytime, to account for this change of practice, it cannot be 

 alleged that the day fishing had seriously affected the movements of 

 the fish, since the second half of the period was more productive than 

 the first ; and, if the change from day to night fishing was sufficiently 

 beneficial to account for this improvement, that fact alone would have 

 been sufficient ground for expecting the fishery to continue without 

 deterioration, under conditions supposed to be more favourable to 

 the fish, for a much longer period than it had under the less favour- 

 able circumstances. If, again, over- fishing was the cause of the 

 periodic decline of the fisheries, the last period of abundance, which 

 was double the length of any of its predecessors, ought, primd facie, 

 to have been the shortest of all, since the tendency of fishermen is 

 always to employ more and more destructive instruments of fishing. 



