their drift-nets as trammels to catch the fish in
the act of spawning. (4.) They assert that the
fish caught by trawling is, by the admission of
all, good for the fresh market, and that it is this
market which they desire to supply. They deny,
however, that the fish so caught are unfit for
curing, and give, as the reason for an occasional
inferiority in this respect, the rapid and careless
handling to which the fish are subjected in the
prosecution of an illegal fishing, which may at any
time be interrupted. (5.) They wholly deny, as a
class, that they injure the nets of the drift-net
fishermen: they point to the records of collisions
between the drift-net fishermen themselves
before trawling was introduced, and say that the
alleged instances of mischief on the part of the
trawlers have never been substantiated when
submitted to an official investigation. (6.) They
see no difficulty in carrying on the two systems
of fishing together, as the trawlers chiefly fish
close to the shore in shallows, where the drift-
nets are rarely placed. They further assert
that, instead of frightening the fish away so that
they will not mesh in the drift-nets, they drive
the shoals out of the shallow into deeper water,
where the drift-nets are enabled to capture them.
(7.) They assert that the large hauls got by the
trawler are of great benefit to the consumer of
fish, by enabling him to get herring at a much
cheaper rate than he could by the old method of
drift-net fishing; and that the poor especially
benefit by the abundance of fresh fish thus
thrown into the market."

Now, how has the case stood at Loch Fyne,
that long estuary between the Cantyre peninsula
and the mainland which bites into the country
for some miles above lnverary? About a thousand
herrings go to a barrel. The average yearly
take of herrings in Loch Fyne was twenty-five
thousand barrels in the four years preceding
December, 1858, but forty-two thousand barrels
in the four years following. All along the coast
of Loch Fyne are fishing villages and stations.
Tarbert is the head-quarters of the trawlers;
Inverary of the drift-net men. The suppression
of trawling in Loch Fyne has been fitfully
carried into effect. In 'fifty-two it was effective,
and the hungry Tarbert men took only
three hundred instead of six thousand barrels of
fish. In 'fifty-three, an accident to the government
vessel in the Loch left the trawlers little
impeded; in the following year the Russian war
carried her Majesty's vessels into other waters.
Trawling revived. In 'fifty-seven, a Treasury
Commission recommended "the repeal of a
statute which has no other result than to keep
a considerable population in the habitual and
successful violation of the law." The Fishery
Board believed that this good advice would be
taken, and the trawlers were left unmolested,
till in 'fifty-eight and 'fifty-nine the drift-net
men in Upper Loch Fyne, being encroached
upon, threatened to take the law into their own
hands, and in prospect of a serious breach of the
peace (for the fishermen brought guns into their
boats), the acts of 'sixty and 'sixty-one were
passed. Meanwhile, in spite of the asserted
interference of the trawlers with the shoals, the
take of herrings has been steadily and considerably
increasing in Loch Fyne, from an average
of fifteen thousand barrels a year in the five
years before eighteen 'forty-eight, to nineteen
thousand a year in the next five years, twenty-
five thousand in the next, and forty-five in the
last. But during the last period of five years,
there was in one year—'sixty-one—a deficient
take, resembling similar occasional deficiencies
before the trawling system had been introduced.
The fish in that year were plentiful, but
unusually small, so that many slipped through the
drift-nets that would have been caught in the
trawl. The drift-net party ascribed the failure
to the previous trawling, and ascribed to the
previous year's cessation of trawling, the good
herring harvest of the next year, 'sixty-two. At
all events, it is clear that trawling has not
ruined the fishery, and, if the benefit of repression
be so great in two years, what should not
have been the hurt done during the fifteen years'
continuance of the practice? Yet it is a fact
that the last year of trawling yielded the best
take of the whole fifteen. But the truth is, that,
not in Loch Fyne only, but along the whole
west coast of Scotland, there has been, apart
from annual fluctuation, a marked increase in
the annual average of herrings taken during
successive periods of five years. Some part of
the increase is due to the increasing use of
trawl-boats between the years 'forty and 'sixty;
some part to the better make of the drift-nets,
which are now obtained from a manufactory
instead of being made by the fishermen at their
own homes. The history of each, occasional
bad year at Loch Fyne, shows that it always
produced a panic among the fishermen, and
strong representations that something or somebody,
supposed for the time being to be the
cause of the failure, ought to be put down by
law.

It is evident that trawling does not drive the
fish away. Does it damage the fish, rub off the
scale, bruise the flesh, and make them unfit for
curing? It appears that the largest curers had
agents at Tarbert to buy trawled herring, but
the fact that trawling was illegal, say the traw-
lers, did cause them to lift fish hurriedly and
roughly, handle them rudely in their haste, and
tumble them into the boat: all hands being at
the oars to escape capture by the fishery officers.
They say that if the trawled herrings be leisurely
handled, and the boat kept dry by use of
the pump, the trawled herring are quite as good
as the drift-net herring. The commissioners
put this question to the best test by making
experiments of their own with the trawl-net. Once,
the haul was so great that the net broke, but in
each case the fish were delivered in excellent
condition, the scales not rubbed off, the flesh
not discoloured, and no fish under six inches
mixed with them. It was found, on seeking
reports from places where trawling was not
illegal, that in Ireland the trawled herrings were
found less damaged than those which had struggled
in the meshes of the drag-net: while the