of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 



67 



will take only the large fish, we shall certainly reduce the ntittiber (possibly, 

 almost certainly not to a serious degree considering the present enormous 

 numbers of the herring, but still to some extent), of those large spawning 

 herring, and the greater will this become the case as the fishing industry in- 

 creases. The more we take these large herrings the less opportunity will 

 they have of depositing their spawn, because it must be remembered that 

 practically we limit our fishing by this very condition, striving to get the 

 herring before they have spawned and when nearly ripe, the spent fish falling 

 off in condition, and therefore in commercial value, and also getting beyond 

 our reach by forsaking the spawning ground. Now, were this the only result 

 of the large mesh it would little affect the general size of the fish as we 

 get them, — would be advantageous indeed so long as the actual spawners 

 left in the sea were sufficient to naturally keep up the supply, or their 

 decrease was made up by artificially hatched or reared young. But it is 

 undoubted that spawning herring very much smaller than what are com- 

 monly called large fish, are present in enormous quantities on our coasts 

 every year for the purpose of depositing their ova."^ When one asks the 

 meaning of the term matie, the answer generally is, that it is an immature 

 fish, a rather indefinite term, unless it is qualified by an explanation of 

 whether it applies to the growth of the fish as a whole, or only to the con- 

 dition of the sexual organs, but as matter of fact the great proportion (at 

 least after the very beginning of the fishing season and judging by my 

 samples) of these maties, are fish which, small either ' racially ' and there- 

 fore fully grown, or small because young and having arrived at sexual 

 maturity before having reached their full size, are either actually spawning 

 or will very shortly do so. It matters little in an argument as to size of 

 mesh whether these spawning maties are a small variety or young fish, 

 the fact remains that the descendants of the former will be small for the 

 same reason that their parents are so. and as to the latter, analogous cases 

 lead us to the same conclusion, although in the latter case they may be 

 always recruiting the ranks of the larger. If, then, the mesh of the nets is 

 enlarged so as to allow these small spawning fish to escape, we encourage 

 the smaller individuals, through their whole existence if they are adult 

 herrings, or if they are only young fish we protect them while they and 

 their ova are small and likely to produce small progeny, taking them with 

 the large mesh only when they reach a condition suitable for improving 

 the size of the race. I shall have to refer later on to the presence of these 

 small spawners among the larger, but the taking of the big fish alone 

 would have a tendency not only to reduce the actual numbers, but in- 

 directly the increase of the race by the loss of their spawn, and it would 

 reduce also that correction of the small size among the herring, which must 

 be caused by the interbreeding of the large and small, and which almost 

 certainly takes place. 



I have noticed this matter entirely as it may affect the size of our her- 

 ring (and even in this view too much stress must not be laid on it), and 

 not at all in its commercial aspects, in respect to which many other con- 



* The Scottish Fishery Board Reports show how much larger a number of barrels 

 of maties are cured than of the other classes of herrings, and as the maties are 

 smaller than the others, the proportion in numbers must be much larger. Yet most 

 of these ' maties ' are small fish which will spawn during the current season, and, as 

 the name is generally employed now, they include many wholly ripe or nearly ripe 

 herrings. A convenient example, out of many such, to quote as showing that the 

 term matie as now used in Fishery Districts by no means indicates immature her- 

 rings is the following : — Of four fish sent from the N.E. coast, two were labelled 'full,' 

 the other two, which were considerably smaller, being marked 'maties.' Examina- 

 tion, however, showed that the so-called maties were fully ripe, while the larger 

 ' fulls ' turned out to be scarcely half ripe — they would probably not have spawned 

 for several weeks. 



