50 EFFECT OF TEAWL ON EGGS OF FISHES. 



unavoidably hooked, and he brings them on shore or throws 

 them overboard without giving much heed to them, unless 

 requested to do so. No marine zoologist of note would con- 

 sider, on this head, that the liner was ruining the food of 

 fishes, or to any extent affecting the welfare of the fisheries. 

 On the contrary, his ready courtesy and keen observation 

 have been frequently of the greatest service to the naturalist, 

 who has been in the past, and is in the present, greatly indebted 

 to him for many rarities. Yet the fact remains that the liner 

 likewise captures numbers of every group whose wholesale 

 destruction is by some attributed to the trawler. 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, experience 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. 



c. Effects of the Trawl on the Eggs of Fishes, on certain 

 Ground-Fishes, and very Young Fishes on the Bottom. 



In the Report of 1884 it was stated that ' no feature was 

 more remarkable in the inquiry than the rarity of fish-spawn 

 (eggs) in the trawl — notwithstanding the careful search for 

 such on every occasion.' A few zoophytes, with clusters of 

 adherent eggs — then considered to be those of the herring — 

 were all that could be found. Accordingly, it was reported 

 ' that the trawl is almost innocuous so far as the ova of fishes 

 is concerned ; ' and doubt was expressed, even if it passed over 

 masses of the eggs of the herring, whether injury would always 

 take place. 



It has frequently been stated that the use of the trawl on 

 the spawning-grounds of the herring drives away the herring 



