SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 145 



of investigations, and they recommended that a Govern- 

 ment Department should be equipped to carry it out. I 

 am of opinion that the matter would be better entrusted, 

 as I have indicated above, to the local Sea-Fisheries 

 Committees. However, there are the two methods— 



1. To form a properly equipped Government Depart- 



ment (comparable with the Geological Survey), 

 with laboratories and steamers and a scientific 

 staff competent to tackle the scientific problems 

 involved. This is the method adopted in the 

 United States and elsewhere. 



2. The other, and perhaps the more characteristically 



English method, is to give fuller powers to the 

 local authorities, and to encourage them to spend 

 money on the necessary investigations in their own 

 districts. 

 Correct statistics are very important, and they could 

 probably be taken at least as efficiently by the sea-fisheries 

 officers, under the control and supervision of the Fisheries 

 Superintendent in each district, as by the Board of Trade 

 officials ; but no system for the collection of statistics even 

 if much better than that now employed can take the place 

 of a scheme of periodic scientific observations and investi- 

 gations such as I desire to see carried out all around the 

 coast by the local Sea-Fisheries Committees. 



It is, I think, agreed on all hands that what is most 

 urgently required is facts — but facts that can only be 

 ascertained by continuous work on a sufficiently large 

 scale. The Select Committee on the Sea-Fisheries Bill 

 last summer reported that the Scottish Fishery Board's 

 " investigations have been hampered by inadequate means. 

 They have not much money at their disposal, and the 

 vessel which they have for the purpose of scientific inves- 

 tigation is undoubtedly too small,' 3 



K 



