Might not the functions of the Board be so extended as to embrace a statistical inquiry into the capture of haddocks, cod, and ling (other than those to be cured), turbot, etc., in Scotland? We all agree heartily enough in Scotland with the Board’s functions of harbour improvement and fishery police, and we do not grudge, therefore, in any degree, the £15,000 which are expended for its maintenance. Scotland gets so small a portion of the public money in proportion to what it contributes to the revenue that no one would desire to see it deprived of this small grant. The only question connected with it is its proper expenditure. I object entirely to a portion of the duties of the Board—i.e. certifying the quality of the cure. Government might as well step in to certify the manufacture of Dunlop cheese or Glasgow cotton. True, the brand has now to be paid for, and moreover is not at all compulsory, so that curers may trade on their own name if they please, and it is satisfactory to think that they are now doing so in an annually increasing degree.
The salmon-fisheries may be left to their proprietors; the county gentlemen, and others who own salmon-fisheries, seem now to be thoroughly alive to the great danger of overfishing, which has hitherto been the bane of this valuable animal. The chief requisites for a great salmon river and a series of healthy and productive fisheries are—first, a good spawning ground and a provision for the fish attaining it with the least possible trouble; second, a long rest during the spawning season; as also, third, a weekly close-time of many hours. To insure protection to the eggs and to the young fish during the tenderest period of their lives, I would have, as an aid to the natural spawning-beds, artificial breeding-ponds and egg-boxes on every large river; and it would be well if the proprietors of all our larger salmon streams would agree to work their fisheries, as was long ago proposed, on the plan of a joint-stock company, the shares to be allocated on some equitable plan so that both lower and upper proprietors would share in the produce of the river. It is needless to point out to owners of salmon properties the advantages and saving that would at once accrue from such a mode, and such a plan would especially be the best way of settling the existing differences between the upper and lower holders. It was well said by the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the salmon-fisheries of England and Wales, that “it has been found by experience in all the three countries that the surest way to increase the stock is to give the upper proprietors an interest in preserving them. The upper waters are, in fact, the nursery of the fish; it is there that the breeding operations take place, it is there that the wasteful destruction committed by poachers and depredators, if suffered to have their way, is carried on. It lies with those to whom the rights of fishing, and the lands adjacent to those parts of the streams belong, either to permit the ruinous waste of the breeding fish to go on, or to take measures for protecting them. They cannot take either course without in the one case conferring a benefit, and in the other permitting an injury, to all the parties lower down. But it is almost needless to say that they will not make exertions or incur expense to preserve the fish, unless encouraged to do so by being allowed to reap some share of the produce of the waters.”
The laws of Scotland as to her salmon rivers are confessedly defective—confessed by the constant efforts to amend them, often ending in only making them worse. This will be eternal if some attempt be not made to act according to the reason of the thing; clearing the ground, and starting on a new and rational principle, instead of tinkering or trying to tinker what is past mending, and never ought to have been. Rivers are subjects entirely different in their nature from lands. A man, having secured a patch of land, may (as is generally understood) do anything he pleases with what he calls “his own” but render it a nuisance. This is wrong; for his obligation to the country, if not to himself, is to use it to the best advantage for the public good. As to rivers, this obligation is more distinct. They are more of the nature of public property, both as regards the public generally and those holding property on their banks and so having private interests in them. No man at the mouth of a river has any moral or legal right to stop the fish from ascending to their breeding-places. This, clear as it may seem, is not generally recognised, and hence the loss to the country, and misery to the useful and valuable animals bred in them, or that might be bred in them, from the ignorant and reckless self-seeking of some, and the negligence or pointed disregard of all interests displayed by others.[22]
I have not in the course of this work intruded many of my own theories as to fish and fishing upon the reader; but I have not been studying the subject for twelve years without theorising a little, and when the proper time comes I shall have a great deal more to say about the natural history of our food-fishes than I have said in the present volume. In the meantime I am anxious, as regards the whole of the sea fisheries, to inculcate the duty of collecting more and better statistics than we have ever yet obtained.
Our great farm, the sea, is free to all—too free; there is no seed or manure to provide, and no rent to pay. Every adventurer who can procure a boat may go out and spoliate the shoals; he has no care for the growth or preservation of animals which he has been taught to think inexhaustible. In one sense it is of no consequence to a fisherman that he catches codlings instead of cod; whatever size his fish may be, they yield him what he fishes for—money. What if all the herrings he captures be crowded with spawn? what if they be virgin fish that have never added a quota to the general stock? That is all as nothing to the fisherman as long as they bring him money. It is the same in all fisheries. Our free unregulated fisheries are, in my humble opinion, a thorough mistake. If a fisherman, say with a capital of £500 in boats, nets, etc., had invested the same amount of money in a breeding-farm, how would he act? Would he not earn his living and increase his capital by allowing his animals to breed? and he would certainly never cut down oats or wheat in a green state. But the fish-farmers do all these things, and the Fishery Board stamps them with approval. We must look better into these matters; and I would crave the expenditure by government of a few thousand pounds definitely to settle, by well-devised experiments, all those points in the natural history of the herring and other white fish which clog the prosecution of these particular fisheries. Surely it would not be difficult, as I have already suggested, to construct a sea-pond where we could observe the spawn from the time of its deposit till the period at which it quickened into life; and we could note the growth of the fish and so fix beyond cavil the period at which our most important food fishes become reproductive. Further, could not the fisherman be made to pay a small sum of money annually by way of licence, he being bound at the same time to give in a schedule to a registrar, or some other officer to be appointed, of the number and gross weight of the different kinds of fish caught, the number of lines and hooks used in the capture, and the time taken to capture them? Many other changes might be made in the machinery and time of capture; these, however, I will take another opportunity to point out; my present purpose has simply been to bring into a focus our various fishing industries and describe to the public the Harvest of the Sea.
APPENDIX.
I. OBSERVATIONS ON FISH-GUANO.
“The importance of this field of industry has been fully appreciated in France, and a factory has been established at Concarneau, in the department of Finisterre. A full report of a visit to the factory having been made by the distinguished chemist M. Payen, and the well-known agriculturist M. Pommier, to the French Agricultural Society, we purpose presenting our readers with the chief points contained in that report, in the hope that another year may not pass over without some attempt of the like kind being made upon our coasts.