322 THE ZOOLOGIS'. 
arrived (pp. 35 and 36 of that Report), beg leave respectfully to submit to 
your consideration the following observations, viz. :— 
“JT. That conclusions Nos. 2 and 3 of the Commissioners, viz., that 
‘ Legislation in past periods has had no appreciable effect,’ and that ‘ Nothing 
that man has yet done, and nothing that man is likely to do, has diminished, 
or is likely to diminish, the general stock of herrings in the sea,’ if correct, 
are absolutely contradicted by conclusion No. 13, which recommends that 
‘The Sea-Birds Preservation Act, protecting Gannets and other predacious 
birds which cause a vast annual destruction of herrings, should be repealed 
in so far as it applies to Scotland.’ 
“TI. That conclusion No. J, stating that ‘The herring fishery on the 
coast of Scotland as a whole has increased and is increasing,’ clearly shows 
that there can be no necessity for the step recommended in conclusion 
No. 13 as above cited. 
“TIT. That conclusion No. 13 seems to have been arrived at from 
exaggerated or incorrect information, as will appear from the following 
considerations :—The number of Gannets on Ailsa is estimated (Report, 
p- xi.) at 10,000, and a yearly consumption of 21,600,000 herrings is 
assigned to them; while the Commissioners assume that there are ‘ fifty 
Gannets in the rest of Scotland for every one on Ailsa,’ and on that 
assumption declare that the total destruction of herrings by Scottish Gannets 
is more than 1,110,000,000 per annum. This is evidently a miscalculation ; 
for, on the premisses, this last number should be 1,101,600,000, a difference 
of more than eight millions. 
“But, more than this, supposing the figures at the outset are right, it 
appears to the Close-Time Committee that the succeeding assumption of the 
Commissioners must be altogether wrong; at any rate, there is no evidence 
adduced in its support, and some that is contradictory of it. 
“The number of breeding places of the Gannet in the Scottish seas has 
long been known to be five only, as indeed is admitted by one of the 
Commissioners (Appendix No. 2, p. 171); and the evidence of Captain 
M‘Donald, which is quoted in a note to the same passage, while estimating 
the Ailsa Gannets at 12,000 in 1869 (not 1859 as printed), puts the whole 
number of Scottish Gannets at 324,000 instead of 510,000, which there 
would be at the rate of fifty in the rest of Scotland for one on Ailsa, 
according to the Commissioners’ assumption. 
“Moreover, 50,000 of these 324,000 birds, or nearly one-sixth, are 
admitted by this same Commissioner to be ‘ of great value to the inhabitants’ 
of St. Kilda, and indeed they are of far greater value to them than any 
number of herrings, since it is perfectly well known that the people of 
St. Kilda could hardly live without their birds; therefore, this 50,000 must 
be omitted from any estimate of detriment. Deducting, then, 50,000 from 
Capt. M‘Donald’s 324,000, we have 274,000, and these, at the Com~- 
