HYDROGRAPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 219 



agreed on at the Christiania conference.^ In all 

 the agitations for fishery legislation since 1893, it 

 has been tacitly assumed that the fishing grounds 

 of the North Sea were being depleted. One of 

 the objects of the international investigation is to 

 determine this with certainty, and it has been 

 assumed by the writer in question that this object 

 was to be attained by the " fishery experiments " 

 of the Christiania programme, that is, by trawling 

 observations of the nature of those made by the 

 Scottish Fishery Board on the east coast of Scot- 

 land. Now this method was (rightly) shown to 

 be faulty when carried out in such an extensive 

 area as the North Sea, and it was concluded that 

 the results of the international investigation would 

 not be of value. This would be a just criticism, if 

 it were the case that an important part of the 

 investigation was the determination by trawling 

 experiments of the degree of depletion of the 

 fishing grounds. But a reference to the official 

 programme of the work to be undertaken will 

 show that this was certainly not the case. 



The other charge was made by the Committee 

 on Ichthyological Research,^ and referred to the 

 probable accuracy of the results which might be 

 expected from the organisation of the international 

 work. Nearly all scientific work at sea, which 

 has reference to the condition of the fisheries, 



1 D. N. Paton, in a letter to the Times, 31st March 1902. 

 ^ Jiepori of this Committee, Memorandum, p. xxiv., 1903. 



