274 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



finally, by tlie polliitiou of the waters, which are poisoned by waste 

 matter from many manufactories. 



The President of the Society said that, apart from these diifereut 

 causes of the destruction of fish, there is another, on which too much 

 could not be known to call the attention ; this is the '• cleansing to a 

 clean border," prescribed by the administration for all the little water, 

 courses. The banks would become absolutely vertical walls 5 all the 

 plants on which fish sjiawn would disappear. Now, it is precisely in 

 the little watercourses tributary to the principal rivers that the fry 

 especially are developed. Thus the cleansing to a clean border, when 

 it is not absolutely necessary in order to facilitate the running of water 

 and to assure tl^e supply of manufactories, ought to be done away with 

 as one of the deeply to be regretted causes of the disappearance of fish. 

 Meanwhile, far from being an exception, this cleansing is really an ab- 

 solute and obligatory practice. From this results an appalling destruc- 

 tion of fish. 



Ml. Millet remembered that the question of the depopulation and 

 restocking of the watercourses has often been the object of particular 

 attention on the part of the Society of Acclimatization, which has seen 

 many of the measures which it has proposed for remedying the evil 

 adopted by the administration. Among these measures stands the cre- 

 ation of reservations for fish, from which excellent results have been 

 obtained. More than 820 kilometers [about 510 miles] of navigable 

 streams are actually made into reservations, in which all trespassing, 

 even that with the floating line, is prohibited for five successive years. 

 While recognizing the good effects of reservations, at least in certain 

 places, Mr. Raveret-Wattel thought that it would be well not to ex- 

 aggerate the efficacy of this measure. In fact, the reservations protect 

 the carnivorous and destructive species as well as those which are not; 

 and the rapid increase of perch and pike has contributed much of late 

 years to the diminution of the other species. 



Mr. Millet did not believe that the pike spawned in the reserves. As 

 to the perch, it is easy to destroy the strings of eggs which it attaches 

 to the water jilants. [Bulletin, April, 188 «, p. 263.] 



In making an annual report on the works of the Society in 1882, C 

 Raveret-Wattel spoke as follows : 



WniTEFiSH. — "Important shipments of eggs of different foreign sal- 

 monoids have been sent you again this year by generous donors, among 

 whom, as always, we have to mention first Prof. Spencer F. Baird, Com- 

 missioner of Fisheries of the United States. About 250,000 eggs of 

 the whitefish {Coregomis albns), sent from New York by his orders, have 

 reached you in perfect condition, and you have been permitted to under- 

 take a very interesting experiment in the acclimatization of this species, 

 the introduction of which in our fresh waters would be a valuable achieve- 

 ment. Mr. Fred Mather, a member of the Commission of Fisheries, has. 



