MOMENTOUS QUESTIONS. 199 



before the Reformation, the demand, judging from our present 

 ratio, would have been greater than the sea could have borne. 

 Interested parties may sneer at these opinions ; but, notwith- 

 standing, I maintain that the pitcher is going too often to the 

 well, and that some day soon it wUl come back empty. 



I have always been slow to believe in the inexhaustibility 

 of the shoals, and can easily imagiae the overfishing, which 

 some people pooh-pooh so glibly, to be quite possible, especially 

 when supplemented by the cod and other cantibals so constantly 

 at work, and so well described by the Lochfyne Commission ; 

 not that I believe it possible to pick up or kiU every fish of a 

 shoal ; but, as I have already hinted, so many are taken, and 

 the economy of the shoal so disturbed, that in all probability 

 it may change its ground or amalgamate with some other 

 herring colony. I shall be met here by the old argument, 

 that " the fecundity of fish is so enormous as to prevent their 

 extinction," etc. etc. But the certainty of a fish yielding 

 twenty thousand eggs is no surety for these being hatched, or 

 if hatched, of their escaping the dangers of infancy, and reaching 

 the market as table food. I watch the great shoals at Wick 

 with much interest, and could wish to have been longer 

 acquainted with them. How long time have the Wick shoals 

 taken to grow to their present size 1 — ^what size were the shoals 

 when the fish had leave to grow without molestation 1 — how 

 large were the shoals when first discovered? — and how long 

 have they been fished ? are questions which I should like to 

 have answered. As it is, I fear the great Wick fishery must 

 come some day to an end. When the Wick fishery first began 

 the fisherman could carry in a creel on his back the nets he 

 required ; now he requires a cart and a good strong horse ! 



Although Scotland is the main seat of the herring-fishery, I 

 should like to see statistics, similar to those collected in Scotland, 

 taken at a few English ports for a period of years, in order that 

 we might obtain additional data from which to arrive at a right 

 conclusion as to the increase or decrease of the fishery for herring. 

 It is possible to collect statistics of the cereal and root crops of 

 the country ; it was done for all Scotland during three seasons, 

 and it was well and quickly accomplished. What can be done 

 for the land may also, I think, be done for the sea. I believe 

 the present Board for Scotland to be most useful in aiding the 

 regulation of the fishery, and in collecting statistics of the catch ; 

 their functions, however, might be considerably extended, and 



