STATISTICAL AND OTHER INFORMATION. 897 



short period, destroy the employment of tens of thousands, 

 and the cheap and favourite food of tens of millions of our 

 people." 



Something may be effected by laws which allow each 

 bed to rest for a period of years after each season of fishing 

 upon it. It is the general belief, however, that shell-nsh- 

 beds must be cultivated as carefully as garden-beds, and 

 that this can only be done by leasing them to individuals. 

 This is already the practice in the Northern States, where 

 oysters are planted in new localities; there is difficulty, 

 however, in carrying out this policy in the case of natural 

 beds, to which the fishermen have had continued access 

 for centuries. It is probable that the present unregulated 

 methods will prevail until the dredging of the natural beds 

 come to be remunerative, and that the oyster industry will 

 then be transferred from the improvident fishermen to the 

 care-taking oyster-culturists, with a corresponding increase 

 in price and decrease in consumption. (/) 



Yes ! as I have said, wading through Professor Goode's 

 columns of statistics relative to the United States Fisheries, 

 and the oyster fisheries in particular, I am almost tempted 

 to agree with him in his somewhat pessimistic inferences, 

 but, upon more mature consideration taking it for granted 

 that "the conclusions gained by Professor Baird tally 

 exactly with those of Professor Huxley, that the number of 

 any one kind of oceanic fish killed by man is perfectly 

 insignificant when compared with the destruction effected 

 by their natural enemies ; " (#) and that such has been the 

 course of nature for unknown ages I am the more stead- 

 fastly inclined to believe in the ostracultural infallibility of 



(t) " The Fishery Industries of the United States," pp. 22-23. 



(u) Ibid., p. 65. 



DD 



