Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/346

322 arrived (pp. 35 and 36 of that Report), beg leave respectfully to submit to your consideration the following observations, viz.:—

"I. That conclusions Nos. 2 and 3 of the Commissioners, viz., that 'Legislation in past periods has had no appreciable effect,' and that 'Nothing that man has yet done, and nothing that man is likely to do, has diminished, or is likely to diminish, the general stock of herrings in the sea,' if correct, are absolutely contradicted by conclusion No. 13, which recommends that 'The Sea- Birds Preservation Act, protecting Gannets and other predacious birds which cause a vast annual destruction of herrings, should be repealed in so far as it applies to Scotland.'

"II. That conclusion No. 1, stating that 'The herring fishery on the coast of Scotland as a whole has increased and is increasing,' clearly shows that there can be no necessity for the step recommended in conclusion No. 13 as above cited.

"III. That conclusion No. 13 seems to have been arrived at from exaggerated or incorrect information, as will appear from the following considerations : — The number of Gannets on Ailsa is estimated (Report, p. xi.) at 10,000, and a yearly consumption of 21,600,000 herrings is assigned to them; while the Commissioners assume that there are 'fifty Gannets in the rest of Scotland for every one on Ailsa,' and on that assumption declare that the total destruction of herrings by Scottish Gannets is more than 1,110,000,000 per annum. This is evidently a miscalculation ; for, on the premisses, this last number should be 1,101,600,000, a difference of more than eight millions.

"But, more than this, supposing the figures at the outset are right, it appears to the Close-Time Committee that the succeeding assumption of the Commissioners must be altogether wrong ; at any rate, there is no evidence adduced in its support, and some that is contradictory of it.

"The number of breeding places of the Gannet in the Scottish seas has long been known to be five only, as indeed is admitted by one of the Commissioners (Appendix No. 2, p. 171) ; and the evidence of Captain M'Donald, which is quoted in a note to the same passage, while estimating the Ailsa Gannets at 12,000 in 1869 (not 1859 as printed), puts the whole number of Scottish Gannets at 324,000 instead of 510,000, which there would be at the rate of fifty in the rest of Scotland for one on Ailsa, according to the Commissioners' assumption.

"Moreover, 50,000 of these 324,000 birds, or nearly one-sixth, are admitted by this same Commissioner to be ' of great value to the inhabitants' of St. Hilda, and indeed they are of far greater value to them than any number of herrings, since it is perfectly well known that the people of St. Kilda could hardly live without their birds ; therefore, this 50,000 must be omitted from any estimate of detriment. Deducting, then, 50,000 from Capt. M'Donald's 324,000, we have 274,000, and these, at the Com-