X 
Tenth Annual Report of the 
this field of fishery work, even for the comparatively short time 
over which they have extended, have yielded successful results, and 
have contributed materially to the advancement of that knowledge 
of fishery problems, the want of which was felt and deplored 
by the Eoyal Commissioners of 1866. The scientific work carried 
on by the Board, the chief results of which have been described 
from year to year in their Annual Report to Parliament, may be 
summarised briefly as follows : — 
Direction of 1. Inquiries into the influence of beam-trawling on the fish 
stituted Sln su PPty> especially within the territorial waters; the capture and 
destruction of immature fish by various modes of fishing ; the con- 
dition of the inshore fisheries for shell-fish and the supplies of 
mussels and other bait for line fishermen ; surveys and examination 
of the fishing grounds, &c. 
2. Investigations into the food, fecundity, reproduction, habits 
and migrations of the food fishes, the location of their spawning 
grounds and of the nurseries of young fish, the time and duration 
of spawning, &c. 
3. The study of pelagic and demersal ova, and of the development 
of the food fishes and edible molluscs from the egg onwards, 
4. Inquiries into the micro-organisms in river waters, and 
associated with salmon disease, and into the food of fishes in inland 
waters. 
5. Observations on the temperature, salinity, and physical con- 
ditions of the sea around the coast. 
6. The artificial propagation of sea fish and shell fish to restock 
depleted grounds. 
Effect of beam The investigations into the influence of beam trawling, which 
trawling. have been carried on with great regularity and care, have furnished 
a mass of scientific and statistical evidence unexampled in the 
history of any fishery, and have been followed by the prohibition of 
this mode of fishing within the territorial seas, As stated in former 
Reports, various portions of the inshore grounds were for experi- 
mental purposes closed against beam-trawling, and by the Herring 
Fishery (Scotland) Act of 1889, the territorial wate.-s were 
included in the prohibition, certain powers being reserved to the 
Fishery Board. Closely related to beam-trawling is the capture 
and destruction of immature fish, which is generally regarded as 
the most important of the fishery problems awaiting solution in the 
immediate future. In certain foreign States and English fishery 
districts the landing or sale of immature fish under certain sizes 
has already been made penal; and in 1890 an International Fishery 
Conference was specially convened in London to consider this sub- 
ject so far as it affected the diminution of the fish supply from 
the North Sea. Extensive observations have been made by the 
Board as to the distribution of immature fish on the East Coast of 
Scotland at various distances from shore and in water of different 
depths ; the minimum size at maturity of the different species and 
the proportions captured by various modes of fishing, with especial 
reference to the mesh of trawl nets, have been ascertained, as has 
also the action of the beam trawl in destroying immature fish 
according to the time the net is down and the nature of the 
