£370 7 0 One or two more subscriptions have come in since this list was drawn up; these will be acknowledged in the January number, and the subjoined letter from Mr. Cowper-Temple gives the state of the Fund in general terms. Broadlands, Romsey, December 9, 1874. Dear Ruskin, The St. George’s Fund, of which Sir Thomas Acland and I are Trustees, consists at present of £7,000 [68] Consolidated Stock, and of £923 standing to the credit of our joint account at the Union Bank of London, Chancery Lane Branch. Contributions to this fund are received by the Bank and placed to the credit of our joint account. Yours faithfully, W. Cowper-Temple. NOTES [1] Of 6th March, not long ago, but I have lost note of the year. [2] The close of the ninth book of Plato’s Republic. I use for the most part Mr. Jowett’s translation, here and there modifying it in my own arbitrarily dogged or diffuse way of Englishing passages of complex significance. [3] Plato does not mean here, merely dissipation of a destructive kind, (as the next sentence shows,) but also healthy animal stupidities, as our hunting, shooting, and the like. [4] Not quite so, gentlemen of the Royal Commission. Harvests, no less than sales, and fishermen no less than salesmen, need regulation by just human law. Here is a piece of news, for instance, from Glasgow, concerning Loch Fyne:—“Owing to the permission to fish for herring by trawling, which not only scrapes up the spawn from the bottom, but catches great quantities of the fry which are useless for market, and only fit for manure, it is a fact that, whereas Loch Fyne used to be celebrated for containing the finest herrings to be caught anywhere, and thousands and tens of thousands of boxes used to be exported from Inverary, there are not now enough caught there to enable them to export a single box, and the quantity caught lower down the loch, near its mouth (and every year the herring are being driven farther and farther down) is not a tithe of what it used to be. Such a thing as a Loch Fyne herring (of the old size and quality) cannot be had now in Glasgow for any money, and this is only a type of the destruction which trawling, and too short close-time, are causing to all the west-coast fishing. Whiting Bay, Arran, has been rid of its whiting by trawling on the spawning coast opposite. The cupidity of careless fishers, unchecked by beneficial law, is here also ‘killing the goose that lays the golden eggs,’ and herring of any kind are very scarce and very bad in Glasgow, at a penny and sometimes twopence each. Professor Huxley gave his sanction to trawling, in a Government Commission, I am told, some years ago, and it has been allowed ever since. I will tell you