EFFECT ON EGGS OF FISHES. 51 



and injures the spawn and spawning fishes. No details, how- 

 ever, are given as to whether line-trawling or beam-trawling is 

 referred to, nor are the facts dealing with the destruction of the 

 spawn and the lesions of the spawning fishes presented in a 

 tangible form. The herring is a fish sometimes exceedingly 

 tenacious of purpose, and a thousand intervening boats with 

 their nets, as at Peterhead, will not prevent it from breaking 

 through and spawning inshore. Again, it has been known to 

 leave old spawning-grounds, e.g., the ' Old Hake ' off the coast 

 of Fife, upon which no trawl ever descended, or indeed could 

 descend with safety. Many reasons have been given for such 

 changes — from the breaking up of the shoal by the boats at 

 sea, to the firing of big guns — but there is a lack of defini- 

 tion. In the Trawling Report of 1884, it was recommended 

 that trawlers {i.e., beam-trawlers) should avoid shoals of 

 herring, and the same suggestion holds to-day. 



Since 1884, no opportunity of observing the effect of a 

 trawl on ground covered by the spawn of the herring has 

 occurred. The boats employed in herring-fishing in winter, 

 however, frequently bring to port masses of the spawn of 

 the herring on their decks, and little difficulty is found in 

 hatching these eggs in the Laboratory, even after sixteen 

 hours' exposure on deck. Thus, even if the eggs of the 

 herring were brought on board during the operations of the 

 trawl, there are good grounds for believing that many would 

 survive after being replaced in the water. In St Andrews 

 Bay the local trawlers formerly brought to land pieces of 

 seaweed, zoophytes, and similar structures to which the eggs of 

 Montagu's sucker and other forms adhered. These were all 

 readily hatched in the Laboratory. The same eggs are 

 frequently brought up on the hooks of the liners. Further, 

 about the middle of January 1886, one of these local 

 trawlers brought a huge adherent mass of large eggs amongst 

 mud to the harbour — thinking it was the spawn of the salmon. 

 After lying on deck a considerable time, the attendant removed 

 the mass from the mud and debris, rather rudely tore it in 

 several pieces, and placed them under sea-water — some of the 

 advanced embryos escaping in the process. The majority of 



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