His scientific training, moreover, made him ridicule the modern notion that it was possible to stock the sea by artificial methods.  He wrote to me, when the Fisheries Exhibition of 1883 was in contemplation,] “You may have seen that we have a new Fish Culture Society.  C—­ talked gravely about our stocking the North Sea with cod!  After that I suppose we shall take up herrings:  and I mean to propose whales, which, as all the world knows, are terribly over fished!” [And after the exhibition was over he wrote to me again, with reference to a report which the Commission had asked me to draw up:  ["I have just finished reading your report, which has given me a world of satisfaction...I am particularly glad that you have put in a word of warning to the fish culturists.” [When I was asked to write the report on this Commission, I said that I would do so if Sir E. Birkbeck, its chairman, and Professor Huxley, both met me to discuss the points to be noticed.  The meeting duly took place:  and I opened it by asking what was the chief lesson to be drawn from the exhibition?] “Well,” [said Professor Huxley,] “the chief lesson to be drawn from the exhibition is that London is in want of some open air amusement on summer evenings.”

[He was not, however, equally certain that particular areas of Sea Shore might not be exhausted by our fishing.  He extended in 1883 an order which Mr. Buckland and I had made in 1879 for restricting the taking of crabs and lobsters on the coast of Norfolk, and he wrote to me on that occasion:] “I was at Cromer and Sheringham last week, holding an inquiry for the Board of Trade about the working of your order of 1879.  According to all accounts, the crabs have multiplied threefold in 1881 and 1882.  Whether this is post hoc or propter hoc is more than I should like to say.  But at any rate, this is a very good prima facie case for continuing the order, and I shall report accordingly.  Anyhow, the conditions are very favourable for a long-continued experiment in the effects of regulation, and, ten years hence, there will be some means of judging of the value of these restrictions.”

[If, however, Professor Huxley was strongly opposed to unnecessary interference with the labours of sea fishermen, he was well aware of the necessity of protecting migratory fish like salmon, against over-fishing:  and his reports for 1882 and 1883—­in which he gave elaborate accounts of the results of legislation on the Tyne and on the Severn—­show that he keenly appreciated the necessity of regulating the Salmon Fisheries.

It so happened that at the time of his appointment, many of our important rivers were visited by “Saprolegnia ferax,” the fungoid growth which became popularly known as Salmon Disease.  Professor Huxley gave much time to the study of the conditions under which the fungus flourished:  he devoted much space in his earlier reports to the subject:  and he read a paper upon it at a remarkable meeting of the