WATER CONSERVATION 93 



more to the possibilities of our waters to supply us with food. The 

 true fish conservationist should look forward to something more than 

 the preservation or the protection of existing fisheries: in fact, his 

 ideal may well be a development of fishery resources that is now scarcely 

 conceived in the public mind. We do not want, in fisheries, a restora- 

 tion of the past, but the inauguration of a future. 



Floods and Fishes 



On every hand there are explanations of the diminution of the 

 number of food- fish of the rivers; but surely this can be ascribed only 

 in part to the causes of over-fishery or to other direct acts of man. One 

 ultimate explanation, it may be confidently stated, will be found in 

 those very conditions which have indirectly affected the flow of our 

 great streams in so disastrous a way as to create a demand upon the 

 government for the storage of waters and the regulation of the flow of 

 streams. Deforestation, denudation, drainage — to these causes, among 

 others, are ascribed the extreme flood conditions ensuing upon the de- 

 velopment of the country, and to these likewise may be attributed a sig- 

 nificant change in the condition of our rivers as bearing upon the nat- 

 ural reproduction and sustenance of fish. 



The occurrence of spasmodic floods, of comparatively short duration 

 and separated by intervals of extreme low water, have a deleterious 

 effect upon fish life in manifold ways. The first realization of this 

 fact comes with the observation of enormous numbers of young fish 

 left in the overflow ponds isolated by the recession of the flood. The 

 significance of the observation is not in any way grasped if we suppose 

 that these innumerable fish were simply carried out by chance and left 

 by a similar chance. The real phenomenon is this. The flood oc- 

 curred when the breeding fish were seeking the shallow and warmer 

 waters for the location of their nests and the deposition of the eggs. 

 When the young from these eggs, together with the adults, are left to 

 starve and suffocate and die in the disappearing or diminishing pools, 

 we see, not the loss of a random proportion of the fish life of the stream, 

 but the actual decimation of a generation. Consequently, it should be 

 esteemed of high importance to reclaim and restore to the rivers the 

 fish thus abandoned otherwise to destruction. Such overflow ponds are 

 now, to be sure, a common source of supply for government and state 

 departments seeking fish for general distribution. It is better that the 

 "lost" fish should be used for some good purpose, rather than left to 

 die, but, that our impression may not be confused, it should be remem- 

 bered that the conservation of fish in the particular stream is regarded 

 and promoted only in so far as the greater part of the fish are returned 

 to the river, and this is done in some cases. 



It may not and does not always occur that the flood comes just be- 

 fore the fish have begun to nest. It may occur while the eggs are yet 



