Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/418

390 perhaps with some few exceptions, were alone regarded in the light of science, while study of the useful groups of Sea Fish were little better than meagrely referred to or looked at rather in the light of a trade subject. How could it be otherwise when the genial but distinguished Yarrell was shunted by the Royal Society as only a tradesman and pseudo-scientist?

Yet, after all, though late in the field, it looks as if Fish economy is bound to revolutionize some of the older doctrines current among Ichthyologists. It is a case of evolution in science; the microscope and embryology have helped Fishery questions over the stile, so that practical or economic Ichthyology—namely, the life-history of our Food Fishes—is the new departure of this branch of Zoology.

There are two circumstances which stand out in relief in the chronicles of commercial Sea Fish. One, the oft-recurring scares as to the decline and probable destruction of the British Fisheries, with repeated Parliamentary enactments thereon; the other, the antagonism of the fishermen and ichthyologists.

What took place, say, in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries onwards, is certainly reproduced with but slight variation up to the present date. Forsooth, there has been no want of legislation; the old Statute Books teem with it. For example:—Catch and traffic in Herring; preservation of Sea Fish spawn and fry; width of mesh of nets; regulations for Pilchard fishery; grievances of Lowestoft versus Yarmouth; encouragement of British Fisheries; relations with foreigners re Fish and Fishing, &c, &c.—nearly all subjects worrying the Sea Fisheries Boards of to-day as much as they did Parliaments in the reigns of the Henrys, Elizabeth, and the Georges.

The fact is, as in every other trade, that of fishing is liable to fluctuations; but the problem in this case and the remedies are far more intricate than in an ordinary business. Even the methods of science, as of political economists, hitherto have failed to unravel the laws of, still less to point out modes of relief to, the fishing industries, though there is a dawn, it is to be hoped, of better things in store. Wherefore non-agreement between fishermen and ichthyologists is easier accounted for. Why inquire about common things, our catch, or where a particular sort of fish is found, &c.? It cannot mean business, but may only hide