The Express.
London, England, 1863-05-25 00:00:00

THE HERRING FISHERY.

The report of Colonel Maxwell, Dr. Lyon Play-
fair, and Professor Huxley, on the natural history of the
herring and the operation of the acts of wile:omit relating
to the modes of fishing, has just been published. The com-
missioners ascribe the remarkable variableness in the an-
nual visite of shoals of herrings to our comets to the varying
quantity of food of the fish, and to the number and force
of the destructive agencies at work. Any circumstance
which increases or decreases the quantity of crustacea and
sand-eels must exercise great influence on herring shoals:
but these are even more acted upon by their great de-
stroyer. The latter may be ranged under the heads of
fish, birds, marine animals and man. Of these by far the
greatest destroyers are fish and marine animals—as por-
poises and other esteems. It is estimated that the total
Kemal take of herrings by our fishermen is 900,000,000,
• prodigious number • but peat as this is, it oinks
into comparative iewifiamos when compared with
the destruction effected by other apncies. Cod alone de-
stroy ten times as great a number XS are captured by all
our fishermen. It is • very common thing to find • ood-fish
with six or seven large herrings in his stomach. When it
is further considered that the conger sod dog fish do as
much mischief es the cod and ling, that the gulls and po-
uts slay their millions, and that porpoises and grampuses
destroy additional countless multitudes, it will be evident
that our fishing operations, extensive as they are, do not
destroy 5 per cent. of the total number of full herrings
that are destroyed every year by other causes. These
facts, which cannot be controverted, prepare us for
the conclusions arrived at by the commissionen with
reference to the legislative enactments relating to our her-
ring fishery. In 1851 an act at parliament was passed
making tranling for herrings illegal; and subsequently
another act was passed, establishing • close time on the
west coast of Scotland. It was tutting provided that the
only legal mode of capturing herrings should be by drift-
note, the :meshes of which are required to be one inch in
width. Trauling, which is similar to the operation of
seining, was considered to be highly destructive to
herrings, rendering them unfit foe curing, and
that it also greatly injured the spawiung-beds.
The commissioners were at great panes to obtain

a law amonat of evidence from ierione'porties oa these
matters ; sod the result is that they recommend that all
prohibitory legislation bearing on our herring ashay should
be repealed. The statistics of our fisheries show that the
practice of trauling has sot been followed by a decrease of
herrings. In Loch Fyne, where it bar prevailed, the re-
turns show that in the five year, ending 1848, 77,137 barrels of
herrings were taken ; during the next five years, 96,747
barrels ; and during the four years ending in 1862, 168,658
barrels. Under such circumstances the commissioner, re-
port that our herring fishery should not be trammelled by
repressive acts, calculated only to protect clears in-
terests, and to disturb in an unknown, and possibly
injurious, manner the balarce existing between the con-
servative and destructive agencies at work upon the her-
ring. If legislation could regulate the appetites of cod,
conger, and porpoise, it might bs useful to pass laws regard-
ing them ; but to prevent fishermen catching one or two
per cent. of herring in any war they please, seems, in the
opinion of the commissioners, a wasteful employment of the
force of law. They are further of opinion that the recent
legislative enactments have repressed invention, by prohi-
biting new and more productive forms of labour, is calcu-
lated to be destructive rattier than conservative, and is pre-
judial to the consumer of fish and to the public generally.
Atheneum.