Further knowledge, then, both in and out of Parliament,
is what is needed before we can hope effectually to protect the
fisheries. More has been done in the right direction during
the last fifteen years than during the preceding fifty. The
researches of McIntosh, Ginther, Boulenger, Cunningham,
Holt, Garstang, Herdman, Meek, Allen, and others in this
country, and the contributions of Hensen, Sars, Dannevig,
Heincke, Hermes, Dohrn, Delage, Raffaele, Grassi, Giglioli,


58 SALT-WATER FISHES


Calandruccio, Agassiz, to mention only a few, from other seas
have bridged many of the widest gaps in our knowledge as it
was when Day wrote his laborious and still standard work; but
full as many mysteries await explanation. The man who knows
most best appreciates the extent of his own ignorance, and the
interesting communications to the Journals of the Marine
Biological Association, and similar publications, are not only
one long cry for further research, but breathe a spirit of doubt
and reservation that we seek in vain in the positive pronounce-
ments on migrations and development in the books of fifty
years ago. The older writers knew ; the modern investigator
thinks: the more enquiry proceeds, with all the facilities
afforded by modern tow-nets and apparatus for dragging the
secrets from the greatest depths of ocean, the more scientific
men will say they only think, but the more in reality they will
know.
