SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. 223 



capture, while, it may be, he is in a position to see daily what 

 is landed in a large or in a small fishing-centre from both 

 the near and the distant grounds. A close observer of nature, 

 he weaves no theories, and is not incautious in deduction. 

 The welfare of the fisheries as a whole is his aim, and the 

 influences which act on those engaged financially in them 

 or have political or other connections with them, are un- 

 known to him. 



He considers not only the fishes which haunt the various 

 areas, as made known by the different methods of fishing, but 

 is likewise familiar with the whole contents of the water, 

 from the innumerable floating eggs and swarms of 3'oung food- 

 fishes to microscopic plants, all of which as a rule are unknown 

 to those who frequent an area simply to capture as many sale- 

 able fishes as possible. He also is cognisant of the history 

 of the subject, and that complaints very similar in nature to 

 those of to-day were made hundreds of years ago, without being 

 followed by the disasters to the food-fishes so frequently 

 reiterated. 



Besides the foregoing "practical" qualifications, the scientific 

 observer comes to his task with a precise knowledge of the life- 

 histories of the important food-fishes. He knows, for instance, 

 that the young cod as a rule seeks the inshore waters when 

 about an inch in length, remains near the tidal margin for 

 some time, and as it gets larger and older seeks the offshore 

 grounds \ That the haddock, on the contrary, in its early 

 stages is a deep-water fish, and only comes to the inshore 

 waters when 5 or 6 inches in length. He is familiar with the 

 curious cycle in the life-history of the plaice and the turbot, 

 fishes which, as a rule, shed their pelagic eggs in deep water 

 offshore, but the eggs and tiny young are borne shorewards, and 

 are by-and-by to be found at the tidal margin, the former early 

 in the season and in vast numbers, the latter later, larger and 

 in fewer numbers. Further, as these fishes increase in size they 

 return to the deeper waters, thus keeping up as it were a 

 double migration, shorewards in early life, to the offshore when 



1 An interesting and minute study of the growth and early migrations of the 

 cod and whiting has just been completed by Dr A, T, Masterman at St Andrews, 



