OUR FISHERIES 8i 



after standing for five or ten minutes, the contents of the 

 bucket may be thrown overboard, for the spawn will be ferti- 

 lised, and there is some chance of a small proportion surviving. 

 Unripe eggs, by the way, which may be known by their 

 white and opaque appearance, are useless for the purpose, and 

 no good will in all probability be done with the sole, even 

 if ripe, in the male of which the milt is so small that squeezing 

 is ineffectual. In issuing this pamphlet, Mr. Garstang boldly 

 states it as his opinion that Nature is incapable of keeping up 

 the supply of fish with the demands of man ; and even if this 

 be a somewhat gloomy pronouncement on not wholly satis- 

 factory evidence, there is at the same time much to be said for 

 this plan of re-stocking with no expense of fish-hatcheries, but 

 rather as the farmer sows his corn before reaping it. 



VII. The last of the foregoing proposals for the cure 

 of the disease that is apparently impossible of prevention is 

 one that must inevitably be discussed on lines not strictly 

 economic, but rather sentimental. This is a pity, but it cannot 

 be helped. Gradually, as the outcome of education and a 

 general emancipation from barbarism, man has arrived at 

 a view of his duties to the beasts and birds which, while 

 capable of unfortunate exaggeration, is in the main very 

 admirable. Those who find this kindness to animals incom- 

 patible with sport are apt to overdo it ; but with others, not 

 rabid in their humanitarianism, this recognition of certain 

 claims on the part of the so-called " dumb creation " is a 

 pleasant and improving sentiment. Between sentiment, how- 

 ever, and sentimentalism there is a wide gap. A sparrow may 

 be an admirable bird viewed from one standpoint, but that is 

 not the standpoint of the farmer whose grain the sparrow eats. 

 The sportsman may for his own purpose prefer the presence 

 of deer or hares or otters in a country, but the agriculturist 

 or trout-preserver may think differently. So, too, on the sea 

 coast, while the wheeling gannets and mewing gulls and 

 tumbling porpoises doubtless lend a touch of the picturesque 



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