OUR ECONOMIC SEA-FISHES. 391 



some design probably against the fishers' interests, therefore in- 

 terrogators must be baffled. In illustration I may mention that 

 only a dozen years or so ago the streets of St. Andrews witnessed 

 some high jinks. Amidst sounds of merriment an effigy of the 

 Natural History Professor was paraded about and ultimately burnt 

 on the sands. The University don had dared to announce the 

 heretical notion that certain sea-fish spawn floated ; they, the 

 fishermen, knew better, and further concluded some evil intention 

 lay in the Trawling Commission. The real victim enjoyed the 

 joke, and went out to witness his incineration. Ask those fisher- 

 men to-day regarding the occurrence ; they smile at the "lark," 

 but swear by the Professor. 



Among the Statutes of Edward III. were those relating to 

 Herring, since which there have been a shower of others, besides 

 Commissions on the same fish. Indeed it has mainly been 

 through this shoal-roamer, the staple at least of the northern 

 part of the kingdom, that in this country the naturalist has been 

 called in as arbitrator — exactitude versus loose opinion — and 

 Dr. Knox, Harry Goodsir, and Professors Allman and Huxley 

 have acted as the thin end of the wedge. 



In the issue of Couch's ' British Fishes' (1862-64) the author 

 announces as his intention : — " It has been deemed of special 

 importance to give with as much precision as possible an account 

 of the characteristic habits of each species .... with frequent 

 communications from practical fishermen of great intelligence." 



About the same time Bertram, in his ' Harvest of the Sea,' 

 in a prefatory note says he believes his is the "first work in 

 which an attempt has been made to bring before the public in 

 one view the present position and future prospects of the Food 

 Fisheries of Great Britain." 



What doubtless in some measure helped in due season to 

 modify the attitude and hasten the change of British scientific 

 men towards Fishery questions was the Norwegian Prof. Sars' 

 discovery (1862) of the floating (pelagic) nature of the Cod's 

 ova as contradistinguished to the sunken (demersal) nature of 

 those of the Herring and presumably of other fishes. 



It is due though to Frank Buckland to accentuate the circum- 

 stance that for a number of years, in and out of season as the 

 case might be, he kept drumming into the ears of the public, in 



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