598 
NATURE 
[Aucust 8, 1912 
statistical question, whether the fish in our seas are 
being diminished in number by the operations of man. 
A. whole lecture would scarce be enough for me to 
explain to you the difficulties of this problem, the 
methods by which it is attacked, and the preliminary 
conclusions which we may more or less confidently 
affirm. Let me say this in a word, that there is no 
one answer to the question, but that we must separ- 
ately set and answer it for each species of fish, and 
even for this or that particular ground. More than a 
hundred years ago, when our fisheries were trivial, 
the haddock deserted our coasts, and became, for the 
time being, a rare fish. Again, in 1866, long before 
steam-trawling began, Huxley’s Commission reported 
that the haddock was the only fish of which it might 
perhaps be said or shown that its numbers had suffered 
diminution. In Great Britain alone, we take 100,000 
tons of haddock a year from the North Sea, and, in 
spite of fluctuations, I cannot find that its numbers 
perceptibly or significantly diminish. The cod shows 
no signs of recent diminution, and has even been 
increasing in the north. It is otherwise with the 
plaice, the diminution of which was already made 
clear to the Committee of 1893. All authorities are 
agreed that this fish shows serious diminution; and 
only next month our International Council meets at 
Copenhagen to take in hand, after long investigation, 
this important and burning question. The plaice is 
of small comparative importance to us in Scotland, 
for, as I have already shown you, our plaice are few; 
but even in Scotland our statistics tell us that the 
diminution of this fish, and especially of the large 
plaice, has been great and rapid. 
Many important questions I have had to leave un- 
touched in this hurried sketch, but on one of these 
I must yet say a word, I mean the case of the small 
fisherman. We have seen in many ways that the 
industry as a whole tends towards concentration, to 
the use of larger boats, to the need of greater har- 
bours; tends, in the case of line and trawl! fishing, to 
gravitate towards the great centres of population 
and the great highways of traffic. And we have seen 
that an overwhelming proportion of the gain goes 
to those who work the fisheries on this larger scale, 
and that from their labours comes an overwhelming 
proportion of the supply. But there are still some 
6000 small fishing-boats in England and Sooo in Scot- 
land, and (though it is impossible to obtain exact 
figures) I think that about one-seventh or one-eighth 
of the 35,000 fishermen in Scotland, and a somewhat 
larger proportion of those in England, still live, as 
their fathers lived, by a petty industry, an industry 
closely akin to that by which thousands of men in 
Norway and Denmark live. With us they are the 
men who have been left behind, sometimes from lack 
of energy, often through poverty or the remoteness 
of their habitations, by the tide that has carried so 
many of their fellows to wider efforts and to compara- 
tive wealth. They are the fishers of crab, and shrimp, 
and lobster, the hand-line fishers of plaice and had- 
dock and codling, the men who take, now and then, 
a day at the lines, a night at the herring, the dwellers 
in the antiquated harbours and in the tiny creeks of 
outlying coast and distant island. The kindliest of 
Scotch proverbs tells us that ‘tit takes all sorts to 
mak’ a world,’’ and these men have their claim upon 
us and their right to live. It is not too much to say 
that nowadays every fishery department in the king- 
dom is making these men’s case the subject of its 
anxious and peculiar care. 
It is partly for biological reasons, connected with 
the preservation of the general supply of fish, but it 
is in great part for these men’s sake, and for the line- 
fishers in general, in order that they may have a 
stretch of waters of their own, that we close against 
NO. 2232, VoL. 89] 
the trawlers the territorial and more than the terri- 
torial zone. When we close to trawling the waters 
of a shallow and sandy coast or bay, we are, on one 
hand, encouraging the lesser fishermen of the coast, 
and, on the other hand, we are trying to protect the 
young fish, flat-fish especially, whose nature it is to 
congregate on such grounds. 
In some ways I think that the fishing industry, and 
the trawling industry in particular, may justly and 
rightly, and for the general good, have to submit in 
the future to greater restrictions than in the past— 
restrictions especially aimed, for the benefit of the 
industry itself, at lessening the waste of the younger 
fish. But, as Huxley said years ago, ‘‘ Every legis- 
lative restriction means the creation of a new offence; 
means that a simple man of the people, earning a 
scanty livelihood by hard toil, shall be liable to fine 
and imprisonment for doing that which he and his 
fathers before him had, up to that time, been free to 
do!’’ Science, practical policy, and the interests of 
class and of constituency do not always tell the same 
story. And if responsibility be great upon the legis- 
lator, it is scarcely less upon the scientific inquirer, 
who, without pressing his side of the case too far, nor 
thinking that his opinion is all in all, must yet play a 
considerable part in reporting upon the merits of all 
fishery legislation, and in advising as to what had 
best be done, what it were better to leave undone, in 
the best light of his judgment, and with regard to the 
best interests of all. 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
INTELLIGENCE. 
Lonpon.—The following scheme of inter-collegiate 
advanced work in physiology has been approved for 
the Honours B.Sc. Examination :—First Term, 
October-December, 1912 :—Guy’s Hospital : ‘‘ Respira- 
tory Exchange,”’ by M. S. Pembrey; *‘ The Chemistry 
of Blood,’ by E. L. Kellaway and J. H. Ryffel. 
Second Term, January-March, 1913 :—University 
College: ‘Activity of Enzymes and Physiological 
Chemistry pertaining thereto,’ by Prof. Wm. Bayliss, 
F.R.S., and R. H. A. Plimmer. St. Bartholomew’s 
Hospital: ‘‘Central Nervous System of Electro- 
cardiography,’”’ by J. S. Edkins, C. M. H. Howell, 
or E. P. Cumberbatch. Third Term, May-July, 
1913 :—King’s College: ‘t Physiological Chemistry of 
Nervous and Muscular Tissues,’ by Prof. W. D. 
Halliburton, F.R.S., and O. Rosenheim. Bedford 
College: “Advanced Physiological Histology,” by 
J. S. Edkins and Miss M. Tweedy. Internal students 
of the University are free to attend all the courses. 
Mr. A. H. Cheatle has been appointed to represent 
the University at the ninth International Otological 
Congress, which is to be held at Harvard University 
on August 12-17, and Sir G. Newman and Dr. Janet 
Lane-Claypon will be present in a similar capacity at 
the fifteenth International Congress of Hygiene and 
Demography at Washington on September 23-28. 
An exceptional renewal for a third year of the 
science research scholarship held by Mr. E. N. da C. 
Andrade has been made by the 1851 Exhibition Com- 
missioners, the scholarship held by Mr. H. T. Clarke 
has been renewed for a second year, and one has 
been awarded to Mr. H. T. Page for the ensuing 
year. 
The Department of Technology of the City and 
Guilds of London Institute has issued its programme 
for the session 1912-13, containing regulations for 
the registration, conduct, and inspection of classes, 
the examination of candidates in technological sub- 
jects, and for the award of teachers’ certificates in 
manual training and domestic subjects. The altera- 
