[The duties of the new office were partly scientific, partly administrative.  On the one hand, the natural history and diseases of fish had to be investigated; on the other, regulations had to be carried out, weirs and salmon passes approved, disputes settled, reports written.  I find, for instance, that apart from the work in London, visits of inspection in all parts of the country took up twenty-eight days between March and September this year.

Sir Spencer Walpole, who was his colleague for some years, has kindly given me an account of their work together.

Early in 1881, Sir William Harcourt appointed Professor Huxley one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Fisheries.  The office had become vacant through the untimely death, in the preceding December, of the late Mr. Frank Buckland.  Under an Act, passed twenty years before, the charge of the English Salmon Fisheries had been placed under the Home Office, and the Secretary of State had been authorised to appoint two Inspectors to aid him in administering the law.  The functions of the Home Office and of the Inspectors were originally simple, but they had been enlarged by an Act passed in 1873, which conferred on local conservators elaborate powers of making bye-laws for the development and preservation of the Fisheries.  These bye-laws required the approval of the Secretary of State, who was necessarily dependent on the advice of his Inspectors in either allowing or disallowing them.

In addition to the nominal duties of the Inspectors, they became—­by virtue of their position—­the advisers of the Government on all questions connected with the Sea Fisheries of Great Britain.  These fisheries are nominally under the Board of Trade, but, as this Board at that time had no machinery at its disposal for the purpose, it naturally relied on the advice of the Home Office Inspectors in all questions of difficulty, on which their experience enabled them to speak with authority.

For duties such as these, which have been thus briefly described, Professor Huxley had obvious qualifications.  On all subjects relating to the Natural History of Fish he spoke with decisive authority.  But, in addition to his scientific attainments, from 1863 to 1865 he had been a member of the Commission which had conducted an elaborate investigation into the condition of the Fisheries of the United Kingdom, and had taken a large share in the preparation of a Report, which—­notwithstanding recent changes in law and policy—­remains the ablest and most exhaustive doctrine which has ever been laid before Parliament on the subject.

This protracted investigation had convinced Professor Huxley that the supply of fish in the deep sea was practically inexhaustible; and that, however much it might be necessary to enforce the police of the seas by protecting particular classes of sea fishermen from injury done to their instruments by the operations of other classes, the primary duty of the legislature was to develop sea fishing, and not to place restrictions on sea fishermen for any fears of an exhaustion of fish.