10 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
is not stating the case too strongly to say that this county 
is not interested in the improvement of our Fisheries one- 
tenth as much as London and such populous inland Coun- 
ties as Staffordshire and Warwickshire. 
There is no escaping the conclusion that the supply of 
fish 1s a matter not of local, but of Imperial importance, 
-and that consequently the expenses of protecting and 
improving it should be met entirely out of the Imperial 
taxes. This again entails, and ought to entail, Imperial 
control over the means employed in such protection, which 
would put an end to the local jealousy or indifference 
which so often interferes with the attempts made to 
improve the Fisheries. To take Liverpool Bay as an 
example, its south coast is all Welsh, and we have seen, 
there are practically no fishermen on that part of it. Is 
it fair then to ask Flintshire and Denbighshire to contri- 
bute towards the expenses of a Fishery Board for Lan- 
cashire and Cheshire by which the former Counties will 
only benefit the same extent as the mland Counties ? 
Again the Cheshire County Council have refused to allow 
the important breeding ground of the estuary of the Dee, 
to be placed under the control of the Lancashire Fishery 
Board, while they themselves have not as yet taken any 
steps to mitigate the immense destruction of immature 
fish probably caused by the Parkgate shrimp trawlers. I 
am however informed by Mr. R. Potts, Clerk to the 
- Cheshire County Council, that the Dee Fishery Board 
have now applied to the County Council for a grant to 
-enable them to protect the Sea Fisheries in the Estuary. 
There is a prevalent opinion, in which I myself share, 
that the Sea Fisheries of the area under consideration 
have become less productive of late years. Whether this 
is caused by over-fishing, destruction of immature fish by 
trawls (especially shrimp trawls), or by sea birds, which 
ie 
+ pear = ine 
