1881 WORK AS FISHERY INSPECTOR 295 



areas of Sea Shore might not be exhausted by our fishing. 

 He extended in 1883 an order which Mr. Buckland and 

 I had made in 1879 for restricting the taking of crabs 

 and lobsters on the coast of Norfolk, and he wrote to me 

 on that occasion : " I was at Cromer and Sheringham 

 last week, holding an inquiry for the Board of Trade 

 about the working of your order of 1879. According to 

 all accounts, the crabs have multiplied threefold in 1881 

 and 1882. Whether this is post hoc or propter hoc is 

 more than I should like to say. But at any rate, this 

 is a very good primd facie case for continuing the order, 

 and I shall report accordingly. Anyhow, the conditions 

 are very favourable for a long-continued experiment in 

 the effects of regulation, and, ten years hence, there will be 

 some means of judging of the value of these restrictions." 



If, however, Professor Huxley was strongly opposed 

 to unnecessary interference with the labours of sea 

 fishermen, he was well aware of the necessity of protecting 

 migratory fish like salmon, against over-fishing : and his 

 reports for 1882 and 1883 in which he gave elaborate 

 accounts of the results of legislation on the Tyne and on 

 the Severn show that he keenly appreciated the 

 necessity of regulating the Salmon Fisheries. 



It so happened that at the time of his appointment, 

 many of our important rivers were visited by " Saprolegnia 

 ferax," the fungoid growth which became popularly known 

 as Salmon Disease. Professor Huxley gave much time to 

 the study of the conditions under which the fungus 

 flourished : he devoted much space in his earlier reports 

 to the subject : and he read a paper upon it at a remark- 

 able meeting of the Royal Society in the summer of 

 1881. He took a keen interest in these investigations, 

 and he wrote to me from North Wales, at the end of 



the chief lesscm to be drawn from the exhibition ? " Well," said 

 Professor Huxley, " the chief lesson to be drawn from the exhibition 

 is that London is in want of some open-air amusement on summer 

 evenings." 



