258 THE RELATIONS OF THE STATE WITH 



A distinction may be drawn between spawning grounds 

 and spawning beds. The former would include all those 

 vast and indefinable spaces where fish instinctively breed, 

 and the latter those limited portions of the sea which have 

 been artificially established for fish propagation. Examples 

 of spawning grounds would be the districts between Egmont 

 in Holland and the entrance to the Cattegat, where it is 

 believed soles breed ; the district between Specton Cliffs 

 and Robin Hood's Bay off Yorkshire ; and the rocky pits 

 scattered through the North and other Seas surrounding 

 the United Kingdom. 



Spawning beds may be exemplified by the small portions 

 of districts near the coast or in estuaries which, under the 

 Third Part of the Sea Fisheries Act of 1868, or by other 

 enactments, may be allotted by the Board of Trade to 

 private individuals, and which are principally devoted to 

 the rearing of oysters. 



Intermediate between spawning grounds and spawning 

 beds are a third class of spawning spaces, which are near 

 the shore or partially enclosed by headlands, but which are 

 not artificially managed. Swansea Bay and numerous 

 other bays in which fish spawn, but which legislation is 

 almost powerless to directly protect, are instances of this 

 class. The exceptional enactments affecting St. Ives' Bay 

 must not be considered as in protection of a spawning place 

 of fish, but only as regulating the use of a resort of pil- 

 chards. 



From these considerations the threefold division of 

 spawning fields into I, Spawning grounds ; 2, Spawning 

 places ; and 3, Spawning beds is reached. 



The limits of the first are most imperfectly known, and 

 for this reason alone legislation can do nothing directly for 

 them. British legislation could not with any substantial 



