4 -THE DECREASE OE FOOD-FISHES IN AMERICAN WATERS AND SOME 



OF THE CAUSES. 



BY A. M. SPANGLER, 



President of the Pennsylvania Fish Protective Association, Philadelphia, Pa. 



Ill a country like ours, any question relating to the general increase or diminu- 

 tion of wholesome food, of whatever kind, possesses or should possess interest for 

 all. Our food resources are so vast and so varied that we are apt to regard them as 

 almost inexhaustible, and hence many are less careful of them, less disposed to be 

 economical in the use of them, and more likely to indulge in their abuse than were 

 they more limited. Under the influence of such belief, our great forests are rapidly 

 disappearing, millions of acres of once fertile lands have been cropped to impoverish- 

 ment and turned out to await nature's recuperative influences; the buffaloes, once 

 almost countless in numbers, have been practically exterminated; game animals and 

 birds are steadily becomiug more aud more scarce, and many other of our natural 

 resources have either been completely exhausted or greatly diminished by the belief 

 in their inexhaustibility, or rather by the wastefulness and prodigality which, unfor- 

 tunately, are to be classed among our national characteristics. 



Among the many sources of wholesome food supply that have suffered, that of 

 edible flsh may be mentioned as specially prominent. While, to a great many, such 

 an assertion would seem to lack verification, it is readily susceptible of demonstration; 

 "confirmations, strong as proofs of holy writ," abounding in every direction. 



Taking a map of the United States and noting our many majestic rivers, some of 

 the largest in the world ; the thousands of lesser magnitude and their innumerable 

 minor tributaries, all capable of maintaining an immense amount of flsh life; our 

 chain of unrivaled lakes, equaling seas in area, with the many others of lesser note, 

 and our thousands of miles of sea, gulf, and bay coasts, it may well seem incompre- 

 hensible, to those who have never given the subject serious thought, that with such 

 extensive and varied waters there could be a possibility, even, of a scarcity of food- 

 fish, either present or prospective. What adds to the incomprehensibility is the fact 

 that within the memory of many now living, those streams, lakes, and coasts, almost 

 without exception, teemed with food-fishes. Some of them are still prolific in that 

 respect, but it is a deplorable truth that a very large proportion of them — those 

 inland especially — have been either almost entirely depleted, or their productiveness 

 so diminished as to practically amount to depopulation. If reliable statistics of the 



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