88 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Fisheries Districts is not satisfactory. The Districts are 

 too numerous and unequal, the boundary lines are arbi- 

 trary and unnatural, the methods of the Authorities are 

 too diverse ; and, as a result, the fisheries are very un- 

 equally treated both as to administration and investiga- 

 tion. A glance at the details of expenditure of the 

 different Committees is enough to show how perfunctory 

 and inadequate the examination and protection of the 

 fisheries must be on some parts of the coast. 



For these, and other reasons, the Ichthyological Com- 

 mittee in their Report last year recommended for purposes 

 of fisheries investigation a consolidation of the Districts 

 and Authorities on each of the three great coast lines of 

 England and Wales — East, South and West. It may be 

 worth while to reproduce once more the accompanying 

 rough sketch plan in order to bring this idea clearly 

 before the mind and to show how the three suggested 

 Districts form natural coast areas. Mr. Fell has since 

 shown* that there would be advantages in the amalga- 

 mation of the present Committees on each coast, not only 

 for purposes of investigation but also for administration. 

 He has gone into the question of probable income and 

 expenditure and finds that each such large area would 

 have a rateable value of about thirty millions sterling, 

 yielding, on the rate of one-sixteenth of a penny in the 

 pound, a sum which, according to our Lancashire scale 

 of expenditure, ought to be ample for the proposed work. 

 In these calculations London is left out of account. Its 

 contribution, from a similar rate, if obtainable, might be 

 applied to general central expenses or to special work 

 applying to the whole country. 



Looking at the West Coast as now administered it is 



obviously unnatural and inconvenient that the large 



* I quote from a letter and from a speech by Mr. Fell. So far as 

 I am aware his figures have not yet been published. 



