Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/421

Rh defects were being amended. Complaints of the line and driftnet fishermen stirred the Government to a commission of inquiry on the trawl-net and beam-trawl fishery. Its chairman (the late Earl of Dalhousie), supported by Prof. Huxley and Mr. Brady (Inspectors of English and Irish Fisheries), and colleagues were all experienced and energetic. Prof. Mcintosh fortunately was appointed "to undertake a series of observations upon the results of the use of the beam trawl-net, and upon the distribution of the food-fishes taken by trawlers upon the grounds which they frequent at different seasons of the year." Thus reaching a climax, one may say, for from the Report of this Commission has sprung that activity and fusion of the interests of science and fish industries in Britain.

The Fishery Board for Scotland (reconstituted from the old White Herring Fishery Board) started into new life. Coincidently and at short intervals thereafter there arose Marine Laboratories, to wit, those of St. Andrews, Granton, Plymouth, Liverpool (Biol. Soc), and others, and, later on, a Sea-fish Hatchery at Dunbar.

Whilst the Government could not see their way to carry out the recommendations of the 1883 Commission in extenso, they yet adopted some of them with modifications, and departmental changes resulted. The Sea Fisheries Act of 1888, taken in connection with the creation of County Councils, was the means of introducing the Sea Fishery District Committees of England. With them, as in the instance of Lancashire, further activity took place in fishery problems, though many of them were already being solved through the active and practical efforts of the Scotch Fishery Board and the Marine Laboratories. In fact, ichthyological science had at length been brought in touch and amalgamated with the interests of the fishing communities themselves, and this partly by some of the County Council's Technical Instruction Committee's organizations.

In brief, then, the Victorian Era, inasmuch as commercial Sea Fish and fisheries' lore are concerned, commenced with a distinct paucity of knowledge of the life-histories and habits of the species. Yarrell's 'British Fishes' may be taken as the starting point, adding Parnell's 'Forth Fishes' as a twin sample of their economy and the local faunas then extant. The Jubilee goal or