Abstract
IN 1863–65, Huxley, as a member of a Royal Commission, on fisheries, made a tour; and I cannot do better than quote a report in his own words on one of the places visited—the Isle of Skye. "He would mention an occurrence which made an indelible impression on his mind—the total earnings of one of those peasants, he might say his whole property and everything belonging to him, would not come to more than £5. Certain interested parties in Glasgow ... had got a law smuggled through the House of Commons, where nobody cared anything about it, by which it was made penal to catch a herring during the three summer months of the year, a time at which herrings were swarming in innumerable millions . . . that meant that [a man] might be totally ruined or might be put in prison for doing this. . . . Now there was not the smallest imaginable reason why that enactment should have been passed. It was a stupid, mischievous and utterly useless thing. . . . That appeared to be one of the worst forms of modern oppression."
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GRAHAM, M. Men and Science in the Sea Fisheries*. Nature 154, 105–109 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/154105a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/154105a0
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