50 
1863. They, however, took strong grounds for 
establishing legislative restrictions for fixed engines, 
under which title is included the different pounds, 
weirs, traps and stake nets, which are in common use 
on our own shores. The views of the Commission in 
reference to this matter are of sufficient importance to 
warrant their quotation in full. 
LEGISLATIVE REGULATIONS FOR FIXED ENGINES. 
“So far as the fish themselves are concerned, it is not 
a matter of much importance whether they are taken by 
a fixed engine or by a movable net. Provided that the 
use of these engines is not injurious to the fishing, they 
ought apparently to stand or fall together; and we are 
inclined, in fact, to arrive at this conclusion with respect 
to all those engines which are either temporarily fixed 
to the soil, or which are merely attached, like the stow 
net, to an anchored boat. But as we have already stated 
there is another kind of fixed engine, permanently 
attached to the soil, which seems to us to require much 
more serious consideration. 
“From a fishery point of view there is this difference 
between a fixed engine and a movable net The fixed 
engine is always on the spot. It regularly works with 
every tide, requiring no rest and keeping no Sabbath. 
- The movable net, on the contrary, can only be worked 
by the active labor of the fisherman. Its use, therefore 
is intermittent, and its destructiveness limited. It is 
obvious that an engine that is at work with every tide 
must, or certainly may, catch more fish than a net whose 
use is limited to the capacity of the fishermen for 
endurance. The fixed engine, moreover, covers more 
ground than the movable engine. The fixed engines 
in Swansea Bay reach across the greater portion of the 
Bay. They frequently overlap each other. They do 
not, therefore, like the movable net, take only a propor- 

