245
INFLUENCE ON FOOD-FISHES.
areas and the wonderful powers
of increase of the few shes
remaining would by—and—by people the waters as before, because
everything in the sea around, including the plenitude of food,
—
so
nicely tted for every stage of growth, would conduce to
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this end.
To those who are annually familiar with square
miles of sea (unknown as a spawning—gr0und) carpeted With
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myriads of tiny young herrings like fragments of thread, the
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not uncommon cry of “ ruin of the sheries” seems to need
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.
qualication. When, further, in areas supposed to be exhausted,
a favourite food of shes both in its adult and
i
_
young states..
many adult food—shes are found, whilst the water teems with
myriads of pelagic
at shes and other forms, the
same necessity for caution holds.
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In this group, therefore, as in the majorityof the invertebrates, it is apparently beyond man’s control either to reduce
to vanishing point or greatly to increase the yield of the open
sea.
The larger forms of such species as the halibut, fo'r
.
instance, may be thinned by constant attacks, but the race
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continues as before with a resilience and pertinacity none the
less sure that they are often doubted and may even be denied.
,
It is a satisfactoi*y proof
of the powers of recuperation inherent
in the ocean that for ages the British seas, for example,_have
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withstood the alm0st daily tax of shermen from both sides of
1
The richest food of almost all shès.
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