i 5 o DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



difficult to gauge. The herring shoals which used to frequent 

 many of our sea-lochs seem to have disappeared, and in a 

 limited area, such as the North Sea, there can be little doubt 

 that the stocks of various kinds of fishes have been reduced 

 in numbers, as well as in size of individuals. Many "of man's 

 engines of destruction have contributed to this result. Since 

 the introduction of the otter-trawl in the deeper water, the 

 daily catch of Plaice has continually fallen off, and in inshore 

 fisheries such implements as the shrimp-trawl have been 

 responsible for the destruction of hordes of small fishes, the 

 promise of years to come. In half an hour's shrimping in 

 the Mersey, Mr J. T. Cunningham found many young fishes 

 among his 56 pints of Shrimps 10,407 Flounders, 375 

 Lemon Soles, 169 Hake, 70 Ling, and 12 Soles. 



In the more limited fisheries of our rivers, the results of 

 man's destruction are less dubious, although here pollution 

 of rivers and the creation of obstacles to migration have 

 combined with active slaughter to reduce the stock. Think 

 of the massacres which every year overtake Salmon on their 

 migration from the sea. Stoddart gives a vivid description 

 of such a killing, which took place near Melrose in 1846, 

 when 



upwards of three hundred breeding fish writhed and bled on the prongs of 

 a single leister [a type of three-pronged fork, famous in the annals of Border 

 poaching,] and at least six thousand which had escaped the toils of the 

 Berwick fishermen and formed the hope and stay of future seasons of 

 abundance, were cut off by means of the deadly instrument, along the 

 course of the river [Tweed]. 



But the river slaughter is insignificant compared with the 

 destruction caused by fixed nets and other "engines" which 

 ensnare the Salmon on their journeyings along the coast or 

 in estuaries in search for a suitable stream. 



For many hundreds of years the present methods of 

 catching fish immigrating to our rivers from the sea have 

 been practised ; and for almost as many years discussions 

 have raged as to the ultimate effect of these methods upon 

 the fish stock of stream and river. Asa rule the destruction 

 of migrating fishes in nets and fixed engines at the mouth 

 of a river, has been held to influence adversely the migrant 

 stock, since many of the Salmon on which the bounty of 

 a future season depends fail to reach the spawning grounds. 



