SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. 225 



fishermen were determined to deal with the abuses caused by 

 small-meshed nets, especially those used by trawlers. Both 

 foreign and English fishermen were punished for using such 

 nets to the deterioration of the sea-fisheries by capturing the 

 young. The nets were seized, confiscated and burnt. The mesh 

 of the trawl-net was regulated and fixed at various standards 

 in the time of Charles II. Regulations indeed were carried 

 out from the time of James II. to the accession of Queen Anne. 

 Mr Jex (from whom the above is quoted^) says abuses were not 

 prominent until the Government ceased to regulate the mesh of 

 the trawl-net. 



The need for caution in dealing with the question of the 

 fisheries, indeed, must be apparent to all who have watched the 

 various phases during the last generation. The prominent cry 

 before the Royal Commission on Trawling under Lord Dalhousie 

 was that the decline of the Fisheries was alarming, and that 

 the approach of ruin was near. No reliable statistics other than 

 those of cured fishes were to be had, and thus it was difficult 

 to form an opinion of the exact condition. This alleged serious 

 diminution was coincident with the appearance of steam- 

 trawling in Scotland. It was not previously urged that the 

 sailing- trawlers, in open sandy bays, had ruined the fishing 

 there, and a doubt remains as to whether dissatisfaction so 

 general would have been expressed if the steam-vessels had not 

 entered vigorously into the same pursuit and on the same ground. 

 At any rate, a tendency to use the new seine-trawl has lately 

 appeared in various areas where formerly beam-trawls were 

 employed by the liners. 



Many will remember that the drift-net fishermen of the 

 west coast placed the blame of destroying the herring-fishing 

 on the seine-net fishermen. Accordingly in 1860 a close time, 

 on the west coast, during the first five months of the year was 

 enacted for the herrings. Consequently herrings could not be 

 caught for bait in cod-fishing, and starvation and discontent 

 were prevalent, while the herrings were not a whit improved. 

 A Commission, on which were Lord Playfair and Prof Huxley, 

 removed the restriction with great benefit to the people and to 



1 Fisheries Conferences, Part i. p. 318. 

 M. R. 15 



