130 STUDIES IN INSECT LIFE, ETC. 



in the market, the return on the capital invested, 

 and the impressions of the leading merchants 

 and fishermen. They had little scientific know- 

 ledge of sea-fisheries to guide them, for the know- 

 ledge scarcely existed, and they had no reliable 

 statistics. Nevertheless they arrived at very 

 definite conclusions, as was usually the case when 

 Professor Huxley was involved, and conclusions 

 which subsequent writers have felt to be, for the 

 time when they were formulated, sound ones. 

 There was no doubt that during the early 'sixties, 

 both in Scotland and England, the fisheries were 

 improving, the number and the value of the fish 

 landed at our fishing ports were annually in- 

 creasing ; the capital invested in the industry 

 yielded a satisfactory return. 



It was a time when the free-trade movement 

 was at its height, and whether influenced or not 

 by this economic doctrine the Commissioners 

 reported in the most free-trade manner. The 

 Commissioners strongly opposed the bounty 

 system, which had done so much to build up 

 the herring fisheries in Scotland. This, it is 

 true, had been done away with in 1830, but it 

 had been succeeded by, to the Commissioners, 

 the almost equally objectionable system of brand- 



