578 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



the fishing interests, nor would it allow any clear light to be thrown 

 upon the hurtful character of most methods now in use. 



The young fish, amounting to millions, are carelessly thrown on shore 

 or allowed to perish, when their preservation would bean easy and inex- 

 pensive matter. Everywhere the business is carried on with hurtful im- 

 plements, destroying the eggs and the young fish. Because there is no 

 season when fishing is prohibited, the fishermen destroy millions of eggs 

 by catching during the spawning season, thus sacrificing great future 

 wealth for the sake of inconsiderable present gain. 



Nowhere are any efforts made to neutralize the hurtful influences of 

 industrial pursuits on the life and propagation of fish ; scarcely any- 

 where has an attempt been made to harmonize conflicting interests by 

 such measures as are suggested by the advancement of science. 



The legal relations of the fisheries, especially those pertaining to their 

 renting or farming, are everywhere arranged in such a miserable manner 

 as to lead to the total exhaustion of the waters. In no portion of 

 political economy do we find so many antiquated legal forms, which 

 are hostile to civilization, and so many unpractical and useless regula- 

 tions, as here. Such a state of affairs not only encourages individual 

 proprietors either to make the most reckless use of their privileges or 

 to neglect them totally, but makes a rational fish-culture in larger 

 bodies of water by all other privileged persons almost a matter of im- 

 possibility. 



There are privileges for employing certain specified fishing imple- 

 ments, fish-weirs, automatic traps, &c, and for small spaces in larger 

 bodies of water ; privileges extending only over one-half of a stream, 

 and those which change their possessor every year; privileges of a 

 doubtful or disputed character in private bodies of water ; fishing wa- 

 ters where any one or where all the members of a certain village or 

 town may fish ; and fishing waters which do not go beyond the extent 

 of the shore, &c. The fisheries are nearly everywhere leased in small 

 portions and on short time, thus preventing the lessee from making any 

 improvements. Large estates possessing fisheries lease them frequently 

 to their officials, to foresters, &c, who catch a few fish for their own 

 use, or lease the fisheries to others. Even sheets of water belonging to 

 the state frequently find no lessee on account of the arduous conditions 

 of the lease. In some parts of the country, where fishing has been car- 

 ried on in a reckless manner by the farmers or proprietors of the banks,, 

 the fisheries have, even in brooks that formerly possessed an endless 

 wealth of trout, dwindled down to a mere pastime for boys, or are fre- 

 quently carried on by vagrants, poor day-laborers, and mechanics not 

 at all in a concealed manner, but quite openly and with the knowledge 

 of the proprietors. 



. But very rarely are the fisheries in the hands of men who, by the 

 intelligent and persevering application of sound principles follow a 



