56 SALT-WATER FISHES 



by the bodily transference of the present inspectors and other 

 officials, usefully reinforced perhaps by competent scientific 

 advisers who had duly qualified at Plymouth, St. Andrews, 

 Piel, or some other of our marine laboratories, under their 

 own roof, and subject to their own President. That Scotland 

 should have a Fishery Board and Ireland a Fishery Officer, 

 while England has only an Assistant Secretary, with most of 

 his attention required for other business, seems hardly credible. 

 Yet so it was ordered until the recent removal of the Fisheries 

 Department to the Board of Agriculture. Great things are 

 expected of Lord Onslow, who now, as he puts it, has control 

 of the fishes as well as of the loaves ; but there has not yet 

 been time for a critical estimate of the work that he and his 

 colleagues may be able to perform. 



Further light on our ignorance touching the life-histories 

 of our sea fish, a more thorough knowledge of the remaining 

 secrets of their migrations, their food, their rate of growth, 

 and their spawning-grounds, will alone enable Parliament to 

 legislate usefully. It cannot be said that the average Member 

 of Parliament, even representing maritime constituencies, 

 and thus the spokesman of the fishing population, knows 

 very much about these matters. The writer recollects many 

 years ago being called upon to explain to a legislator not 

 uninterested in our east-coast fisheries the difference in 

 principle and practice between the antiquated beam-trawl and 

 the newer " otter " pattern, and the experience has not been 

 forgotten. Perhaps the worst error commonly made by public 

 men not specially initiated in the freemasonry of the seashore 

 is to regard all the fishermen as an agglomeration of unskilled 

 labourers, as so many men who make a livelihood by getting 

 fish out of the sea by any means handy, netting or hooking, 

 and selling them in the best market. No view could well be 

 more fallacious or more prejudicial to a proper understanding 

 of the problems that call for solution. Not only are the 

 drifters and trawlers, the seaners and liners, the crabbers and 



