in form, the quantities and values being now placed in 

 juxtaposition instead of being as before in separate tables. 

 Sparling are now omitted, and " all other " wet fish include 

 salmoD. According to the Central Authority returns, it 

 appears that, during the fifteen months sparling statistics 

 were collected, sparling were only once landed in the Lan- 

 cashire and Western Sea Fisheries District, namely, 2 cwts. 

 in Liverpool, in July, 1903. 



It is not intended that the above remarks should in any way 

 reflect on the Central Authority, who have had to deal with a 

 difficult problem with inadequate financial aid ; the notes are 

 made simply with a view of pointing out the difficulties of 

 selecting suitable material for presentation in a report of this 

 kind. 



A second difficulty in dealing with the Lancashire and 

 Western Sea Fisheries area, and to the present writer a far 

 more important one than the first, is that the fish landed at the 

 above-mentioned ports do not represent the fish caught within 

 or even adjacent to the area under the Committee's jurisdiction. 

 The steam trawlers which land their catches at Fleetwood and 

 Liverpool go as far as the S.W. Coast of Ireland or even to the 

 Bay of Biscay, and there is no attempt made in the returns to 

 discriminate between such fish and fish captured within the 

 Irish Sea area, much less within the three mile limit. 



In addition to the above there have been, at various times, 

 foreign steam trawlers fishing in the Firth of Clyde in an area 

 closed to British steam trawling. The fish caught by some 

 of these trawlers in the Firth of Clyde is landed at Fleetwood 

 and is included in the returns sent by the Central Authority. 



Of course these returns only affect certain classes of fish, 

 but until some discrimination is made between fish caught 

 within the Irish Sea area and fish caught outside, the reports, 

 of the Central Authority will have no value for our purpose. 



