30 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, ii 



Walpole and I went in with our host yesterday afternoon 

 and started to return on the understanding that he should pick 

 us up a few miles out. Of course we took the wrong road, and 

 walked all the way, some eight miles or so. However, it did us 

 good, and after a champagne lunch we thought we could not do 

 better than repeat the operation yesterday. 



I feel quite set up by finding that after standing about for 

 hours I can walk eight miles without any particular fatigue. 

 Life in the old dog yet ! Walpole is a capital companion — knows 

 a great many things, and talks well about them, so we get over 

 the ground pleasantly. 



April 20. — There was a long day of it yesterday looking over 

 things in the Exhibition till late in the afternoon, and then a 

 mighty dinner in St. Andrew's Hall given by a Piscatorial So- 

 ciety of which my host is President. It was a weary sitting of 

 five hours with innumerable speeches. Of course I had to say 

 " a few words," and if I can get a copy of the papers I will send 

 them to you. I flatter myself they were words of wisdom, though 

 hardly likely to contribute to my popularity among the fishermen. 



On the 21st he gave an address on the Herring. To 

 describe the characteristics of this fish in the Eastern Coun- 

 ties, he says, might seem like carrying coals to Newcastle; 

 nevertheless the fisherman's knowledge is not the same as 

 that of the man of science, and includes none but the vaguest 

 notions of the ways of life of the fish and the singularities 

 of its organisation which perplexed biologists. His own 

 study of the problems connected with the herring had begun 

 nineteen years before, when he served on the first of his 

 two Fishery Commissions; and one of his chief objects in 

 this address was to insist upon a fact, borne out partly by 

 the inquiries of the Commission, partly by later investiga- 

 tions in Europe and America, which it was difficult to make 

 people appreciate, namely, the impossibility of man's fish- ,. 

 eries affecting the numbers of the herring to any appreci- 

 able extent, a year's catch not amounting to the estimated 

 number of a single shoal ; while the flatfish and cod fisheries 

 remove many of the most destructive enemies of the herring. 

 Those who had not studied the question in this light would 

 say that " it stands to reason " that vast fisheries must tend 

 to exterminate the fish; apropos of which, he made his 



