Note 1132 — Chapter III · THE FISHERY CONVENTIONS.

Mr Cornish, quoting from his MS. treatise on zoology, said: “It is generally supposed that all sea fish, the cetaceous (sic) and cartilaginous excepted, deposit their ova in sand-banks, in creeks, bays, and shallow water near the shores, because it is imagined that a certain, though a small, degree of the sun’s action on the water and atmosphere is necessary to bring such ova to maturity. This we know to be the case with the salmon species, which always ascend to the shallow parts of rivers for that purpose, and never lay their eggs in deep water, and therefore we infer that the same influence prevails over the sea fish: this cannot, however, be proved, and rests mainly on opinion and probable conjecture, founded on such facts as we are acquainted with.” It may be said that a Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1817 to inquire into the condition of the fisheries on the south coast of Devon, strongly recommended Parliamentary action for the protection of the fisheries, founding on the same erroneous assumption that the fishes spawned near the shore. A Bill was accordingly introduced in the session of 1819, and again in 1822, for the appointment of conservators or overseers of the bays, creeks, and arms of the sea, to supervise regulations for the preservation of the fish coming there to spawn, and of their brood and fry, and applying to a distance of one and a half leagues from the shore; but it did not pass the Lords. Rep. Select Com. on the State and Condition of the Fisheries on the South Coast of Devon, 1817; Parl. Bills, xxii. 587, 601. Eighth Ann. Rep. Fishery Board for Scotland, Part III., pp. 13, 258 (1890); Tenth, ibid., pp. 19, 235; Eleventh, ibid., p. 13.