Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/214

 

The Resources of the Sea, as shown in the Scientific Experiments to test the effects of Trawling and of the Closure of certain Areas off the Scottish Shores. By W.C. McIntosh, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., &c.⁠C.J. Clay & Sons.

This excellent contribution to the natural history of the sea is written to sustain a thesis, which is, that, granting man's unfortunate agency in the extermination of many land animals, his influence on the resources of the sea is infinitely small, almost practically nil. Last year (Zool. 1898, p. 376) we had the pleasure of giving extracts from a lecture by the Professor on that subject, and this book is a demonstration and exemplification on that theme. It is pleasant to find this bracing optimism in relation to at least one of Nature's realms. The enmity of the fisherman to the Star-fish, by "tearing them across the body before returning them to the water, only helped to increase their numbers, for each portion of the disc was regenerated and became a complete five-rayed Star-fish." In fact, "the survey of the sea and its inhabitants, therefore, in the main, affords no grounds for pessimistic views, but, on the contrary, conduces to reliance on the resources of nature (by which we mean Divine Providence) in this vast area." The deadly effects of the "trawl," as we have read elsewhere, on adult Sponges, Zoophytes, Star-fishes, Crabs, and Shell-fishes on the sea bottom is stated to be compensated by the fact that their larvæ and young are pelagic, and quite beyond the reach of injury. Even the "crushing and division of Sponges is not followed by the death of all the fragments, and each of those which survives is capable of flourishing as an independent organism (not to allude to the liberation of ova which may happen to be present)." It seems very necessary to remember that there is a surface as well as a bottom fauna, and that while we may bewail the action of the trawler on the latter, we must not overlook the action of screw-propellers, which must kill myriads of young, and destroy countless floating eggs. After all, our knowledge of even some of our common food-fishes is very incomplete. "Why should we not be in a position to say, in this nineteenth century, that a fish, say, the Haddock, extends in great numbers from either hemisphere into the Atlantic, and, if