602 



NATURE 



[April 27, 1899 



published jointly with Kimball in 1884, should be singled 

 out in the above passage, while Rayleigh is patronised as 

 a " competent investigator." 



In the history of the earlier times Prof. Cajori has fol- 

 lowed good guides, such as Whewell and Mach ; and 

 though here also the space is entirely inadequate to give 

 a sufficient account of the subject, we like this portion 

 better than his treatment of contemporary science. 



That there should be omissions was inevitable, but it 

 might have been thought that the kinetic theory of gases 

 was of sufficient importance to justify a short paragraph, 

 while the only reference to that theory is to be found in the 

 statement that a mathematical investigation of the radio- 

 meter action was given by Clerk Maxwell. Here again, 

 as a matter of history, it was the discussion between 

 Osborne Reynolds and Johnstone Stoney, not alluded to 

 in the book, which brought about the correct explanation 

 of the radiometer, and however important Maxwell's 

 paper may be, it only appeared when the matter was 

 cleared up. In a detailed historical account it is often 

 necessary to allude to scientific squabbles and unpleasant 

 discussions, but the author of this book might well have 

 pleaded want of space, and omitted, for instance, such a 

 passage as this : " William Thomson and Tait, placing 

 a much lower estimate on Mayer's researches, brought 

 the charge that Tyndall was belittling the work of Joule." 

 I have marked several passages which are open to 

 criticism, but it is not my intention to find fault with the 

 details of a book which, as a whole, is perhaps as well 

 done as could possibly be. It is the whole attempt to collect 

 isolated facts in the belief that these constitute a history 

 that seems to me to be mischievous. This does not, 

 however, exclude the fact that most readers will probably 

 find in the book some things they did not know before, 

 and some useful references. Arthur Schu.stf.k. 



OUR SEA FISHERIES. 



The Resources of the Sea, as shown in the Scientific 

 Experiments to test the Effects of Trawling and of the 

 Closure of certain Areas off the Scottish Shores. By 

 W. C. M-^Intosh, M.D., LL.U., F.R.S., &c. Pp. xv'i 

 ■V 248, and Tables. (London : Clay and Sons, 1899.) 



IT is well known that at the time of the late Lord 

 Dalhousie's Royal Commission on Sea-Fisheries 

 (1883-85) Prof. M'Intosh conducted, for the Commission, 

 a series of most important trawling investigations off the 

 coast of Scotland which formed the starting-point of a 

 good deal of the experimental and observational work 

 of the Fishery Board for Scotland — work which has been 

 noticed from time to time in the columns of Naturk 

 during the last ten or twelve years. The book before us 

 is practically devoted to the summing up of that work 

 and the discussion of its results, and there is no one 

 probably who has a better right to do that than Prof. 

 .M'Intosh, who, by his trawling investigations in 1884, 

 suggested the experiments of the Board, and who him- 

 self may be said to have superintended and controlled the 

 work while acting as scientific member of the Board from 

 1892 to 1895 — when he was succeeded by Sir John Murray. 

 All this gives additional importance to the fact that Prof. 

 M"^Intosh now declares against the policy of the P'ishery 

 NO. 1539, VOL. 59] 



Board, criticises their methods and their conclusions as 

 published in recent annual reports, and is apparently 

 favour of removing all restrictions upon fishing, and ol 

 throwing the territorial waters open to trawlers am 

 liners alike. 



It is clear, then, that the book deals with debatabl 

 matters, and probably few fisheries experts will agrei 

 with the author in all his points. The work is happily" 

 named the " Resources of the Sea," as the central idea 

 running all through it is that marine animals and plants 

 have such extraordinary powers of reproduction as to be 

 practically unaffected by the influence of man ; while the 

 secondary title shows that it is the trawling experiments 

 and the results of closure of sea-areas off the coast of 

 Scotland that are specially discussed and criticised. 



There is an " Introductory" chapter, giving a general 

 review of marine life, with most of the statements in 

 which every biologist will agree. It may be remarked, 

 however, that the vast possibilities of increase which 

 may be true of diatoms and many groups of lower 

 animals, and even of some fish, are not necessarily true 

 of all kinds of food fishes in the inshore waters. The 

 plaice and the sole are probably in this respect in very 

 different case from the herring, the cod, and the oft- 

 quoted haddock. 



Prof. M' Intosh next gives us a chapter dealing with 

 the effects of trawling, and of the hooks of liners, upon 

 the food, the eggs and the young of our fishes : the 

 present state of the fishery steamers and their apparatus, 

 and upon the method in which the Fishery Board for 

 Scotland have carried out the recommendations of the 

 Trawling Commission. In all of this there is naturally a 

 good deal of evidence to show that the trawlers do not 

 do the harm to the sea-bottom that has been from time 

 to time ascribed to them ; and we readily agree with the 

 conclusion on p. 50 : 



" A calm survey of the situation, therefore, does not 

 lend support to the notion that the trawl, as ordinarily 

 employed in sea-fishing, is the only destroyer of the 

 invertebrate animals of the bottom ; and, further, ex- 

 perience does not demonstrate that the sea-bottom in any 

 known region has been, by the use of such line or trawl, 

 so seriously impoverished as to be unable to support 

 fish-life." 



Some of us are unable, however, from what we know 

 on other coasts, to endorse the further opinion that 

 trawling does no great damage to the young food-fishes 

 on the bottom. Our experience in Lancashire is that 

 grave destruction of immature flat-fish is caused by 

 trawling in the " nurseries " along the shallow sandy 

 shores ; and that in protected areas, such as the closed 

 ground off Blackpool, a rapid increase of the more 

 sedentary flat-fish takes place. We fail to understand 

 the statement ' on p. 234, that closure is powerless to 

 prevent such destruction. 



Prof. M'Intosh then takes up, one by one, the sea- 

 areas which have been closed against trawling by the 

 Fishery Board, and in which experimental hauls have 

 been made from time to time by the Board's small 

 steamer, the Garland. Unfortunately that vessel is too 

 small for the work ; we labour under a similar dis- 



1 " The cnpturc of great numbers of small lisbes by either trawlers or 

 liners is a misfortune for the country, but the closure is pcwerless to prevent 

 it." This requires further explanation. 



