EFFECT OF LEGISLATION UFON OCEAN FISHERIES. 41 



business continued for a long series of years, as with the herring fishery of the North 

 Sea, the scup fishery of Rhode Island, and the menhaden fishery of our Atlantic coast ? 

 How long can this increase offish manifest itself before the arrival of the time predicted 

 when they will be totally exterminated % 



Then we are treated 'to the following argument, from a memorial sent from the 

 towns bordering on Buzzards Bay : 



The natural result of seining, even in the open sea, is extinction. The same senseless rapacity 

 of man which has exterminated our buffalo, which has destroyed the whale fishery, which is aiming 

 to ruin the fur-seal fishery of Alaska, and which will, if unchecked by legislation, kill all Massa- 

 chusetts game in a few years, has found even the apparently inexhaustible fertility of the ocean 

 unable to resist the assaults of netting. 



The fallacy of this reasoning is too apparent. It is possible to exterminate one 

 form of life and not equally so another. 



The mammals generate by a slow process of one at a time, while the fish propa- 

 gate by thousands and millions; their spawn is estimated from 10,000 to 9,000,000. It 

 may be that these mammals may be brought to the verge of extermination, but it 

 does not follow that the rats aud mice, the flies, or the mosquitoes may. We wish 

 they could, and now were, but we fear they never will be. And we are quite as sure 

 the fish of the sea will never be exterminated until the Ruler of the Universe puts his 

 hand upon them through some one of the natural agencies at his command. 



The confidence manifested in the ability of the fishermen to exterminate the fish 

 would justify a contract with them for the extermination of the pests that annoy us. 

 Since " by the application of means to an end by men, that end is sure to come as a 

 sequence," according to the reasoning ot these men, the children of to-day may con- 

 gratulate themselves that when they are old enough to take their noon nap they will 

 hear no buzzing of flies or mosquitoes nor be bitten or stung by these pests of our 

 lives. The poor horses will also escape these torments — think of it ye members of a 

 society with a long name ! 



In view of the evidence gathered by past investigation and the estimates of the 

 destruction of fish by different agencies, the insects present much better illustration 

 of the effect of fishing by man upon the fish than do the mammals so often referred to. 

 The number of fish in the sea is as far beyond our estimation as the insects and can be 

 no more influenced by legislative acts. Most, if not all of them, have at times been 

 absent within the last or present century before the use of new appliances that are 

 considered destructive; hence the changes were from causes independent of the acts 

 of man, and natural causes ; besides we have the best of authority for saying that the 

 powers of man are inadequate. 



In the consideration of a subject it becomes esseutial to know the experience of 

 the past, what has already been learned concerning it. It would be the extreme of 

 conceited egotism to ignore the past aud attempt to evolve from our own narrow 

 experience alone conclusions upon a subject like that of our fisheries. We therefore 

 look to the record of past investigations; we find there has been much patient labor 

 and careful thought bestowed upon this subject. We should pause loug and look 

 carefully before accepting conclusions adverse to those arrived at after such thorough 

 research and investigation. 



We can not, therefore, treat this subject fairly without quoting freely from the 

 reports of the past, even though they are familiar to all. The English commissioners, 



