SEA FISHERIES. 3 



doubt that our fisheries fluctuate a good deal from year 

 to year ; and it is frequently the case, that they may be 

 good on one part of the coast when they are bad on 

 another. The important herring fishery on the coasts 

 ' of Scotland is a remarkable example of this, and that 

 it is so, is familiar to most persons concerned in those 

 fisheries. Thus, it not unfrequently happens that 

 when the fishery on the east side is particularly suc- 

 cessful, a scarcity occurs on the west coast ; or her- 

 rings are sometimes abundant on the west coast, when 

 the fishery on the eastern side has been generally 

 unsuccessful. Again, in some years the fish are 

 equally abundant or scarce on both coasts. 



These fluctuations are found in even small districts 

 of a line of coast, or, one part of a season may be good 

 and another bad in the same locality. Precisely 

 similar variations occur on all the coasts of the British 

 Islands, and with all kinds of fishes. Weather is an 

 important element in the question ; but the real expla- 

 nation of these fluctuations cannot be given until we 

 know a great deal more of the habits of sea fish, and 

 of what influences their migrations from one part of 

 the coast to another, and their movements towards the 

 shore, or the reverse, than we do at present. On these 

 very important questions the fishermen can only offer 

 crude opinions, although in very many cases their 

 ideas are expressed with the fullest confidence in their 

 being strictly founded on facts. The fisherman's know- 

 ledge may, indeed, be commonly summed up in the 

 fact, that certain fishes frequent particular localities at 

 some definite season. They fish for them there ac- 



B 2 



