﻿on, I dare say, rather a considerable smugling trade with them, dried. I have 

 not thought it necessary during my investigations to enter into these matters 

 which concern the police only; but so much is sure, if minimum regulations 

 are ever to be of any consequence with respect to the plaice in the Cattegat, 

 then at least the wholesale trade in fish under the size limit must be for- 

 bidden and prevented by an effective control on land at these places. 



The whole profit on little fish at these places, calculated in money, is 

 scarcely of any great value, but where the income is small, beforehand, will 

 any diminution in it, however insignificant, be met with complaints. The 

 whole matter would be without any further import, if it did not prey upon the 

 very root of a greater matter: the plaice-fishery in the whole Cattegat- 



A j)roposition to introduce regulations with respect to -the size of the 

 meshes at these places, instead of a size limit of the fish, has the usual draw- 

 backs of such regulations, and would be just as unpleasant to the fisher- 

 men as a size limit, if it were to lead to the wished-for result, viz. the protec- 

 tion of the young fish. — 



By fixing a size limit for the sole, the turbot, and the brill there are not 

 so many practical things to take into consideration as with the plaice; for 

 those fish are not to the same degree as the latter indispensable for the fisher- 

 men ; as a rule they only take them when they are caught accidentally, and 

 the population can live very well, even though they stayed away from the 

 fishing-grounds for a year. — Further, there is the advantage that we need 

 only fix one size for each species in our seas, with the exception of the turbot 

 at Bornholm; for the small specimens of turbots in our Fjords cannot be taken 

 into consideration; they are rather to be looked upon as fry of the turbot 

 from the Cattegat. The sole and the brill are, so to speak, fished in the Catte- 

 gat only, and of these fish, as far as we know, there is only one race. — As 

 these three species of fishes are not by far so common as the plaice, I have 

 only scarce information to give of them; but as they live in num- 

 bers in the Cattegat and Skager Back only, because they are more of a 

 sea-fish than the plaice, we may with respect to them expect much likeness, 

 biologically, to the same species in the German Sea. 



In the south of the Cattegat I have seen mature male soles of c. 8 inches 

 and mature female ones of c. 9 inches; this agrees very well with E. W. 

 L. Holt's observations in the German Sea, and his size limit of 12 English 

 inches agrees very well with the wishes of many fishermen at Frederiks- 

 havn, 10 inches to the base of the caudal fin. This latter size must be 

 supposed to be quite suitable pro tern, in our seas; whether, after all, it 



