220 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



So long as the countless hosts of the young of the round- 

 fishes, like the Cod and the Haddock, people vast areas of the 

 open sea, regularly appear off our rocky shores, or fill the great 

 midwater- and bottom-nets in deep water, or, like the newly- 

 hatched Herrings, form a carpet on the sandy bays ; so long as 

 swarms of the young of the flat-fishes frequent the tidal margin 

 on sand or sandy mud, and are scattered, at a somewhat older 

 stage, broadcast over our sandy bays ; so long as the fishery 

 statistics, not only of Britain, but of all the countries bordering 

 the North Sea, show only the usual fluctuations of an uncertain 

 pursuit, or point to an increase ; so long as the calm survey of the 

 whole subject is as satisfactory as at present, it would be neither 

 scientific nor practical to doubt the permanence of the marine 

 food-fishes, or the marvellous resources of Nature in the sea. 



Such, then, is a brief and imperfect outline of the facts which 

 make it clear that the British fisheries, notwithstanding all the 

 restlessness and distrust of the fishermen and the public, and 

 notwithstanding all the fears of the learned as to man upsetting 

 the balance of nature, are, upon scientific grounds, not unsatis- 

 factory. ' The larger fishes on a given area may, by constant 

 work, be diminished, and the rest rendered more wary, but the 

 ranks are soon filled up by the younger forms. When we come, 

 in the following part, to consider the international statistics and 

 observations — though some of these are from the hands of those 

 who began the work imbued with the popular notion of the 

 ' Impoverishment of the Sea ' — it will be interesting, after their 

 unequalled opportunities and unequalled expenditure (of £70,000), 

 to discover how far such a view has been substantiated. 



