252 EEPOET OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



destroy the vastly greater number, yet these are the fish swimming in 

 the open sea and taken after the operation of spawning has been accom- 

 plished; while the pounds secure particularly the spawning fish, and that, 

 too, during the few weeks when they school near the shore for the pur- 

 pose of depositing their eggs. Whether the British committee, which 

 prosecuted the inquiry as to the influence of nets and traps upon the 

 fishing, would have decided as they did, to the effect that they could ob- 

 serve no evil result therefrom, had the blue-fish been an inhabitant of 

 their coast, is a very serious question. 



