BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 371 
auce of fish on trawling grounds, we nevertheless can not lose sight of 
the fact that the testimony of those best qualified to know positively the 
merits of this question can scarcely be thrown aside as of no value. The 
following extracts from a lecture delivered by Mr. Edward Jex, C. C. 
(a salesman at Billingsgate, formerly a practical fisherman, and still a 
smack owner), at the Norwich Fisheries Exhibition, in 1881, will be of 
interest in this connection as showing the other side of the question : 
“ I am well aware there are those who will not admit of any falling 
off in the supply of trawl fish, but the old proverb, that facts are stub- 
born things, is strictly applicable to this case ; and I do not doubt that, 
by adducing the plain incontrovertible facts Without any distortion, I 
shall be able to prove that the answer just given by me is the perfectly 
correct one. For this purpose it will be necessary for me to go back for 
a few years from the present — twenty to twenty-five will suffice. At 
that period a first-class trawling vessel was not more than half the size 
of many of the splendid vessels of to-day, some of them from 50 to 80 
tons, and working a beam nearly if not fully double the length ; conse- 
quently the mouth of one of these nets will go over double as much 
ground as a net would twenty-five years back, and with what result? 
One of the small vessels, with a net about half the size, would at that 
period take, in nearly every case, as much fish in one night as one of 
these large vessels now obtains in a week, and the fish were much lar- 
ger ; in fact, the full-grown matured fish were so plentiful that the small 
fish, such as taken now, would at that time have been valueless. The 
gentlemen present who have been engaged in the trawl-fishing fcr so 
long a period will, I have no doubt, be able to corroborate my state- 
ments. I also wish to impress upon you, my hearers, that there are 
now fully five- or six times the number of vessels employed in the deep- 
sea fisheries around our coasts than there were twenty-five years ago; 
yet with all this increase in vessels, and the increased size of the net, 
we at the present time find, aud have found for some time past, a very 
large falling off in this branch of the fisheries. 
“ Thirty five years back there were from the port of Hull 25 vessels 
engaged in trawling, their combined tonnage was 625 tons, and their 
insurance value £6,000, but to-day there are 450 vessels, their tonnage 
31,500 tons, and insurance value £450,000. 
“ The surest index to the supply of fish is and always will be the quan- 
tity which is upon sale in the various markets, and the prices of the 
same. Twenty years ago soles were sold 12.9. to 20s. a trunk, plaice and 
haddocks at 5s. per pad, and all other kinds of trawl fish at equally low 
prices and within reach of the humblest families of the land. But as 
time has gone on so has the trawl fishing gone on, I am sorry to say, 
for the worse. That splendid and nutritious fish, the sole, is being 
swept out of our seas, is no more the cheap food of the poor and middle 
classes, but is nearly a luxury on the rich man’s table, and is almost a 
rarity to some fishmongers’ shops. During this last month 1 have sold 
