426 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 



but that it should furnish material and facilitate research 

 on the part of others who would join together to establish 

 such a laboratory at private expense was not only proper 

 but laudable. The foundations for the present important 

 and flourishing laboratory at Wood's Hole were thus 

 laid. But the necessity of caution was made all the more 

 evident by the unfriendly attacks of some members of 

 Congress as the laboratory grew more important and 

 more widely known. 



That the growth of the establishment should not be 

 hampered by land speculators, a friend of Baird's, a 

 co-worker at the Smithsonian, Dr. J. H. Kidder, pur- 

 chased at prevailing values a sufficient amount of adjacent 

 land which he held for the laboratory's future use. 



It soon became evident to Professor Baird that the 

 multitudinous traps, pounds and other appliances, which 

 lined the fishing shores, and in Chesapeake Bay made it all 

 but impossible for anadromous fishes, like the shad and 

 herring, to reach their spawning grounds in fresh water, 

 were the real causes of the diminution of the supply of 

 food fishes. No animal of a size large enough to have an 

 economic value can long escape destruction by the myriad 

 devices invented for its capture by man. On the other 

 hand, the attempt to check entirely the more destructive 

 modes of capture would raise against the Commission the 

 united forces of pecuniary interest and its corollary, Con- 

 gressional influence. A limited amount of restriction 

 might be borne by the fisherman, but any attempt to root 

 out the real evil was obviously, at that period, impracti- 

 cable. The only solution of the difficulty lay in increasing 

 the stock of fishes so that it would survive the danger of 

 extermination. 



The American Fish Culture Association was alive to 



