OUB ECONOMIC SEA FISHES. 393 



defects were being amended. Complaints of the line and drift- 

 net fishermen stirred the Government to a commission of inquiry 

 on the trawl-net and beam-trawl fishery. Its chairman (the late 

 Earl of Dalhousie), supported by Prof. Huxley and Mr. Brady 

 (Inspectors of English and Irish Fisheries), and colleagues were 

 all experienced and energetic. Prof. Mcintosh fortunately was 

 appointed "to undertake a series of observations upon the results 

 of the use of the beam trawl-net, and upon the distribution of 

 the food-fishes taken by trawlers upon the grounds which they 

 frequent at different seasons of the year." Thus reaching a 

 climax, one may say, for from the Report of this Commission 

 has sprung that activity and fusion of the interests of science 

 and fish industries in Britain. 



The Fishery Board for Scotland (reconstituted from the old 

 White Herring Fishery Board) started into new life. Coincidently 

 and at short intervals thereafter there arose Marine Laboratories, 

 to wit, those of St. Andrews, Granton, Plymouth, Liverpool 

 (Biol. Soc), and others, and, later on, a Sea-fish Hatchery at 

 Dunbar. 



Whilst the Government could not see their way to carry out 

 the recommendations of the 1883 Commission in extenso, they 

 yet adopted some of them with modifications, and departmental 

 changes resulted. The Sea Fisheries Act of 1888, taken in 

 connection with the creation of County Councils, was the means 

 of introducing the Sea Fishery District Committees of England. 

 With them, as in the instance of Lancashire, further activity 

 took place in fishery problems, though many of them were already 

 being solved through the active and practical efforts of the Scotch 

 Fishery Board and the Marine Laboratories. In fact, ichthyo- 

 logical science had at length been brought in touch and amalga- 

 mated with the interests of the fishing communities themselves, 

 and this partly by some of the County Council's Technical In- 

 struction Committee's organizations. 



In brief, then, the Victorian Era, inasmuch as commercial Sea 

 Fish and fisheries' lore are concerned, commenced with a distinct 

 paucity of knowledge of the life-histories and habits of the 

 species. Yarrell's ' British Fishes ' may be taken as the starting 

 point, adding Parnell's ' Forth Fishes ' as a twin sample of their 

 economy and the local faunas then extant. The Jubilee goal or 



