FISHERY STATISTICS 231 



for instance, while another might contain twice 

 or thrice that number ; and with regard to this 

 very important consideration — the sizes of fish 

 landed — no information was included in the 

 pubhshed returns. In the smaller places the 

 difficulty of estimating the quantity of fish landed 

 would, of course, be less ; but even at those places 

 the collector could not always be at the fish 

 docks or quays, and the catches might be landed 

 by steam trawlers, sailing trawlers, by carts or 

 by hand, and at all times during the day ; so 

 that even at the small fishing ports it must have 

 been quite impossible for the collectors to ascertain 

 for themselves what was the value of the trade 

 of their district. In nearly all cases it seems 

 to have been the custom to obtain the returns 

 of fish landed from the railway returns of the 

 amount of fish carried away ^ — a very different 

 thing, for the amount of fish sold in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the fishing ports must vary very 

 considerably, and in some cases is quite a large 

 proportion of the total quantity. 



Then the number of fishing ports and districts 

 included in the official list of places at which 



1 Even then the published returns were very far from accurate in 

 some cases. The official figures for the quantity of mussels landed 

 at Morecambe in the season 1901-2 were 1375 tons, but it was 

 ascertained that 2500 tons were actually sent away by rail from 

 that port during the same season. Further, all this quantity, with 

 the exception of a very few bags, was landed direct from the local 

 fishing grounds. 



