710 REPORT— 1895. 



^ Alt.boug-h zoology has never appealed to popular estimation as a directly useful 

 science having industrial applications in the same way that Chemistry and Physics 

 have done, and consequently has never had its claims as a subject of technical 

 education sufficiently recognised ; still, as we in this Section are well aware, our 

 subject has many technical applications to the arts and industries. Biological 

 principles dominate medicine and surgery. Bacteriology, brewing, and many 

 allied subjects are based upon the study of microscopic organisms. Economic 

 entomology is making its value felt in agriculture. Along all these and other 

 lines there is a great future opening up before biology, a future of extended use- 

 fulness, of popular appreciation, and of value to the nation — and not the least 

 important of these technical applications will, I am convinced, be that of zoology 

 to our fishing industries. When we consider their enormous annual value — about 

 eight millions sterling at first hand to the fisherman, and a great deal more than 

 that by the time the products reach the British public, when we remember the 

 very large proportion of our population who make their living directly or 

 indirectly (as boatbuilders, net-makers, &c.) from the fisheries, and the still larger 

 proportion who depend for an important element in their food supply upon these 

 industries ; when we think of what we pay other countries — France, Holland, 

 Norway — for oysters, mussels, lobsters, &c., which we could rear in this country 

 if our sea-shores and our sea-bottom were properly cultivated ; and when we 

 remember that fishery cultivation or aquiculture is applied zoology, we can readily 

 realise the enormous value to the nation which this direct application of our 

 science will one day have — perhaps I ought rather to say, we can scarcely realise 

 the extent to which zoology may be made the guiding science of a great national 

 industry. The flourishing shell-fisli industries of France, the oyster culture at 

 Arcachon and Marennes, and the mussel culture by bouchots in the Bay of 

 Aiguillon, show what can be done as the result of encouragement and wise assist- 

 ance from Government, with constant industry on the part of the people, directed 

 by scientific knowledge. In another direction the successful hatching of large 

 numbers (hundreds of millions) of cod and plaice by Captain Dannevig in Norway, 

 and by the Scottish Fishery Board at Dunbar, opens up possibilities of immense 

 practical value iu the way of restocking our exhausted bays and fishing banks — ■ 

 depleted by the over-trawling of the last few decades. 



The demand for the produce of our seas is very great, and would probably pay 

 well for an increased supply. Our choicer fish and shellfish are becoming rarer, 

 and the market prices are rising. The great majority of our oysters are imported 

 from France, Holland, and America. Even in mussels we are far from being able 

 to meet the demand. In Scotland alone the long line fishermen use nearly a 

 hundred millions of mussels to bait their hooks every time all the lines are set, 

 and they have to import annually many tons of these mussels at a cost of 

 from 2,1. to .3/. 10s. a ton. If 'squid' (cuttlefish) could be obtained in sufficient 

 quantity, it would probably be even more valuable than mussels as liait, but its 

 price is usually prohibitive. I happen to know that a fishing firm in Aberdeen 

 paid during this last winter over 200/. for squid bait for a single boat's lines for 

 the three months October to December, and there are fifty to sixty of such boats 

 north of the Tyne. Here is a nice little industry ready for anyone who can 

 capture or cultivate the common squid in quantity. ' 



Whether the wholesale introduction of the French method of mussel culture, 

 by means of bouchots, on to our shores would be a financial success is doubtful. 

 Material and labour are dearer here, and beds, scars, or scalps seem, on the whole, 

 better fitted to our local conditions ; but as innumerable young mussels all round 

 our coasts perish miserably every year for want of suitable objects to attach to, 

 there can be no reasonable doubt that the judicious erection of simple stakes or 

 plain bouchots would serve a useful purpose, at anj^ rate in the collection of seed, 

 even if the further rearing be carried on by means of the bed system. 



All such aquicultural processes require, however, in addition to the scientific 

 knowledge, sufficient capital. They cannot be successfully carried out on a small 

 scale. When the zoologist has once shown as a laboratory experiment, in the zoo- 

 logical station, that a particular thing can be done— that this fish can be hatched or 



