FISHERMEN AND FISHERIES. 285 



scientific, yet, nevertheless, simple practical matters, which 

 are essential as a basis for legislation in regard to deep sea 

 fisheries. 



Government cruisers with scientific professors on board 

 have been most successfully used in putting the finishing 

 touch, by scientific classifications, to the knowledge of 

 facts of practical importance, and many discoveries, useful 

 to the simplest fishermen, have been made by this means. 

 Their surveys, however, can be periodical only, and cannot 

 be based on long-continued experience. " Experience, 

 itself, is fallacious," but it is only on the knowledge 

 acquired from day to day, and throughout the year, by 

 the incessant and systematised experience of fishermen 

 themselves, and on their capacity to place the results in 

 the form of evidence clearly and without prejudice before 

 commissioners and legislators, that legislation itself can 

 most satisfactorily act in providing regulations for Sea 

 Fisheries. 



Since 1861, salmon alone, the fish particularly excepted 

 from the operation of the Sea Fisheries Act of 1868, 

 has received as much attention at the hands of the 

 legislature as all salt-water fish taken together. Its 

 scarcity, since the days when city apprentices expressly 

 stipulated with their masters that the latter should not 

 perpetuate the monstrous cruelty of feeding them on it 

 more than twice a week, amply justifies its present exem- 

 plary protection ; but although the salmon possesses fifty 

 different names, from a laurel, blue-pole, fork-tail, and 

 pugg-peal, to a bunting, yellow-fin, pink or fingerling (24 

 & 25 Viet. c. 109, sect. 4), there is no reason why, when 

 necessary and practicable, the protection of other salt- 

 water fish should not progress pari passu with that 

 extended to salmon. The legislature is fully alive to the 



