SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. 241 



The returns from the various centres all over the country 

 have for the most part steadily increased since 1884\ and 

 though it is true that large quantities are captured on the 

 Great Fisher Bank, Iceland, and other regions at a distance 

 from British waters proper, yet this is due to the more remune- 

 rative nature of the work, and not to the dearth of fishes in 

 the seas at home. Such increase has not been fostered by the 

 closure, but, in the case of both liner and trawler, is due to 

 enterprise which was independent. 



Nature has been able by her unaided resources to ward off 

 extinction in a species so eagerly desired by man as the red or 

 precious coral for one of the greatest incentives of the race, viz. 

 pecuniary gain, and yet so circumscribed in distribution, and 

 so slenderly supplied with means of dispersion in comparison 

 with many marine animals. Moreover, all this has occurred 

 in a sea, which from its limited boundaries is specially excluded 

 from the consideration of the question treated of in this work, 

 and which has been swept by hundreds of boats' crews annually 

 by day and by night. If the continuance of the red coral, 

 therefore, has been assured, even if it be granted (for authorities 

 deem the diminished price rather than scarcity of coral at the 

 root of the present depression) that its numbers have been 

 lessened, what difficulty is there in regard to the permanent 

 abundance of the chief food-fishes of the open seaboard of our 

 country, set as it is in the midst of an almost boundless ocean, 

 with all the marvellous powers of increase, a thousand-fold 

 greater than the coral, so characteristic of them on the one 



1 The long-continued abundance of the food-fishes of Britain may be estimated 

 by the following note on a year's supply to Billingsgate about 1850 {Chambers' 

 Miscellany, *'The Commerce of the Thames"): — The Morning Chronicle "3 or 

 4 years ago" gave a list of the fishes brought in a year to Billingsgate. 

 Live cod 400,000; barrelled cod 750,000; salt cod 1,600,000; salmon 200,000; 

 fresh haddocks 2,500,000; smoked haddocks 19,500,000; soles 97,000,000; 

 mackerel 23,000,000; fresh and red herrings and bloaters 200,000,000; 

 eels 10,000,000; whitings 20,000,000; plaice 36,000,000; brills and mullets 

 1,200,000; turbot 800,000; oysters 500,000,000; lobsters and crabs 2,000,000; 

 shrimps and prawns 500,000,000. Besides, even now, so large an amount as 

 37 tons may be destroyed as unfit for food in a month. • 



M. R. 16 



