DECREASE OF FOOD-FISHES IN AMERICAN WATERS. 23 



result, something to be accepted as inevitable aud therefore remediless. This idea is 

 especially prevalent among those of the present generation who, having never been 

 familiar with the former prolificness and having never given thoughtful consideration to 

 the subjects of artificial breeding and judicious restocking with subsequent protection, 

 conclude that attempts at replenishment will prove futile. Having never known 

 what is meant by fresh-fish plentifulness, they believe, or profess to believe, that money 

 aud effort spent for food-fish increase are simply money and effort wasted. They fail to 

 comprehend the possibility of checking the decrease and of supplementing it with such 

 an increment as will repopulate aud restore productiveness, regarding it as a chimera. 

 They have failed to grasp the idea that such restoration would add millions to the 

 value of the country's resources and enable themselves and thousands of others, who 

 have never known the luxury of partaking of fish taken from home waters, an oppor- 

 tunity for the enjoyment of such a treat. 



Another very prevalent idea is, that the fish in public waters are the inherent 

 property of the people, and may be taken at all seasons, wherever found aud by what- 

 ever means. Fish protective laws are therefore naturally regarded by persons holding 

 those opinions as positive infractions of popular rights, and as such, not only entitled 

 to no respect, but should be resisted. To arrest a violator of them is looked upon as 

 an outrage, and the officers of the law who cause such arrests are considered tyrants. 

 Although it is the sworn duty of wardens, magistrates, and constables to have all 

 offenders against fishery statutes brought to justice and punished, it needs not the 

 saying that such sworn duties are rarely performed and that infractions being thus 

 winked at by the authorities, the laws are brought into contempt. 



Pollution of streams. — Another and a very prominent cause is the pollution of 

 streams. Fish of all other living creatures have a detestation of impure water. It is 

 the element in which they live aud move and have their being. In the order of nature 

 the water in which a lish is brought into existence is adapted to that fish's life. To 

 assume any other condition of things would be an impeachment of the wisdom of the 

 Creator. This, of course, applies to waters in their original condition, before civili- 

 zation with its many contaminating influences intruded upon them. Naturally, there- 

 fore, when the sawdust from sawmills, the refuse from gas works and tanneries, the 

 sewage from cities and towns, the deleterious drainage from manufactories, thepump- 

 ings from mines, etc., are deposited in or allowed to flow into streams, the result must 

 either be the poisoning of the fish or the driving of them to more congenial waters, 

 and the consequent depletion of those streams in which they would have lived and 

 multiplied had they beeu permitted to do so without molestation. 



Almost without exception the fishery laws of the States are emphatic in their 

 prohibition of such contamination, but it is a fact established beyond all controversy 

 that the instances in which the prohibition has beeu respected have been very rare 

 indeed. Instead of regarding the water-courses as sources of health to human beings 

 as well as to fish, they are deemed fit places of deposit for noisome and noxious 

 materials of whatever kind that can be most conveniently disposed of through their 

 agency. 



Damn. — The erection of dams in streams frequented in their season by anadroinous 

 fishes has been generally exterminative of such fishes in the waters above such 

 obstructions. A great many of the dams now in existence were built years prior to 

 the enactment of fishery laws prohibiting such structures, except with a certain 



