EEGULATING THE FISHERIES BY LAW. 141 



gathering up all they meet with, including mud itself, as the trawl drags 

 it, and the other nets which rest lightly on the bottom of the sea, like 

 the seines in their modifications, &c. If, however, the former are the 

 most injurious, the latter are none the less hurtful in certain seasons, 

 for, while the former destroy the eggs and the embryos, the latter gather 

 up the young when scarcely able to swim. In fact, the seines and hand- 

 trawls, and similar nets, are precisely the kind tliat take enormous 

 quantities of young of various kinds of fishes, which are brought to 

 market by the ton, under the name of fravagUe^ and which are the 

 young of anchovies, mullets, gurnards, &c. While this immense quan- 

 tity of fishes brings but a very scant profit, it subtracts from the sea the 

 elements which, in the following seasons, would jn'ove a source of sus- 

 tenance to the people and profit to fishermen. It is owing to this prin- 

 cipal reason, as we have stated before, that, Avhile the (iulf of Naples 

 furnishes the most favorable conditions to the prosperity and increase of 

 its inhabitants, the fact is, that the fishes sent to market are not suffi- 

 cient lor the wants of the people, so that, in spite of the considerable 

 quantities derived from the gulf, if \y^, except a few rare cases of a small 

 variety, the prices are such that the masses cannot afford to procure 

 them. Another effect of this excessive fishing is, th;it in the Gulf of 

 Naples (with few exceptions) the species never attain any considerable 

 size; hence, for example, flounders and many other kind never attain 

 half the size of those in the Adriatic. It is necessary, therefore, to for- 

 bid the use of nets which injure the inhabitants of the sea, of whatever 

 kind. 



ON THE POSSIBILITY OF EXHAUSTING THE SEA- 

 FISHEEIES.* 



BY JAMES Gc BERTRAM. 



The idea of a slowly but surely diminishing supply of fish is no 

 doubt alarming, for the public have hitherto believed so devoutly in the 

 frequently-quoted proverb of " more fish in the sea than ever came out 

 of it," that it has never, except by a discerning few, been thought pos- 

 sible to overfish; and, consequently, while endeavoring to supply the 

 constantly-increasing demand, it has never sufficiently been brought 

 home to the public mind that it is possible to reduce the breeding stock 

 of our best kinds of sea-fish to such an extent as may render it difficult 

 to re-populate those exhausted ocean colonies which in years gone by 

 yielded, as we have been otten told, such miraculous draughts. It is 

 worthy of being noticed that most of our public writers who venture 

 to treat the subject of the fisheries, proceed at once to argue that the 

 supply of fish is unlimited, and that the sea is a gigantic fish-preserve, 

 into which man requires but to dip his net to obtain at all times an enor- 

 mous amount of wholesome and nutritious food. 



This style of writing on the fisheries comes largely into use when- 

 ever there is a project of a joint-stock fishing company placed before 

 the public. When that is the case, obscure little villages are pointed 

 to as the future seats of enormous prosperity, just because they happen 

 to be thought of by some enterprising speculator as the nucleus of a 



* Extracted from ''The Harvest of tlie Sea, a coutribution to the natural and economic 

 history of the British food-tishes. Loudon. John Murray, 1865." 



