ON SCOTTISH MARINE FISHERIES. 377 
date confirms the propriety both of the caution exercised in 
recommending closures in 1884, and of the deductions made 
in 1898 in the ‘Resources of the Sea,’ in so far at least as 
the safety of the food-fishes is concerned. The larger fishes may 
to a large extent be swept from a given area by continuous fishing 
and the rest rendered more wary, but the pelagic eggs of the 
remaining adults and the swarms of young from the neighbour- 
hood by-and-by fill the gaps. 
The agitation alluded to in 1883 was mainly directed. by liners 
against trawlers, and when the scientific report was issued early 
in 1885, dissatisfaction was felt at the result by the liners, who 
were largely influenced by various agitators. Yetafter the lapse 
of twenty-eight years the main facts of that report stand, whilst 
the divergent views both of a section of the public and of some 
scientific men have been disproved by experience and by the 
various investigations which have since taken place, especially 
by the work of the ‘Garland’ in the closed areas of Aberdeen 
Bay, St. Andrews Bay, the Forth, and other areas. Still more 
have the opposite views lacked support from the work of the 
International Staff in the North Sea. Even those scientific men 
who attempted to prove the impoverishment of the sea have long 
been silent, whilst from decade to decade the Scotch Fishery 
Board’s returns have corroborated the results of 1884. The 
attempt of the Board to prove, by comparing the first five years’ 
work of the ‘Garland’ with the last five years, that the fishes 
had been diminished on the areas (from the effects of trawling 
outside the closed limits), failed both in its methods and results 
—notwithstanding all the ability and all the opportunities of its 
advocates. Hven if the work of the ‘Garland’ had been 
aml iguous, subsequent experience would have shown the true 
position. 
Within the experience of one life not a few of the important 
food-fishes have become the subject of gloomy forebodings to the 
fishing population and especially to those who for one reason or 
another have emphasized their opinions. The Herring, the 
Cod, the Haddock, the Plaice, the Lemon-dab, the Sole, and the 
Turbot, have each in turn occupied this position. Yet after all 
these years is any one of them on the road to extinction, or even 
to a serious diminution, when the respective efforts to capture 
Zool. 4th ser. vol XVI., October, 1912. 26 
