COUNCIL - SEPTEMBER 1912 — 34 — 



first instance. The want of sufficient equipment he explained did not merely 

 reduce the scale on which the work must be done, but it affected the reliability 

 of the conclusions to be drawn. The question, he said, is a technical one, viz: — 

 that of the intervals of time and space at which the samples must be taken in 

 order to afford a basis for reliable conclusions. He illustrated the importance of 

 this question by quoting the following passage from the Report of the Icthyological 

 Committee, viz: — "If samples misrepresent the actual conditions or inadequately 

 suggest the causes of those conditions they may prevent the quite legitimate grie- 

 vances of fishermen being redressed and they may be detrimental to the supply 

 of fish generally." 



In the second place, he referred to the question of the cost of carrying out 

 such investigations. He expressed the hope that the day might not be far distant 

 when the Governments concerned would recognise more fully the importance of 

 the work the Council were desirous of doing, and would reafise that it was really 

 a commercial transaction in which the question of actual cost was of less impor- 

 tance than that of the probable returns on the actual capital expended. It was in 

 this spirit that he himself had approached the question thirty years ago when he 

 took up his extensive salmon fisheries in Norway. By the expenditure of hundreds 

 of pounds, where he had spent thousands, he could have made what is known in 

 official parlance as "a good show" but he could not have carried out a thorough 

 scheme which would yield information of commercial value to all concerned. As 

 a private individual he was willing to risk thousands of pounds in obtaining know- 

 ledge which enabled him to effect an improvement to the fisheries commensurate 

 with the sum expended, but he would not sacrifice hundreds merely to make „a 

 show". The enormous success of his experiment had proved the wisdom of the 

 course adopted. The density of fish in the remote regions of the Icelandic and 

 Murman coasts compared with the intensely fished North Sea, afford grounds for 

 believing that similar results might attend the carrying out of a thorough scheme 

 for the acquisition of knowledge with regard to the sea fisheries. The value of fish 

 landed in England and Wales alone he went on to say is upwards of eight millions 

 pounds annually. An expenditure, therefore, of 2 "/o of this sum would have en- 

 abled the investigations to be carried out on the scale originally suggested, and 

 that sum did not represent a very large venture when the results which might be 



