2S4 BULLETIN UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA 



be one year's continuous work, daily if possible, to discover seasonal 

 changes. 



Let us now go to the laboratory and examine the collection. We usually 

 tow the net over the surface, and have taken very many bottles of this 

 material. We will examine an average sample from a representative 

 bottle, under the compound microscope. You will be delighted with th© 

 beautiful forms, the delicate desmids and diatoms, and those wonderful 

 creatures classed broadly as microscopic crustaceans, and more properly 

 as entomostraca. Note the beauty and variety of this life, and then I 

 doubt not you will be seized with a desire to know their names and un- 

 cover their secrets. We would soon have you dissecting out the fifth feet 

 and noting other characters, for we must classify whether we like it or not. 

 Then we are ready to count forms, study movements, or go more deeply 

 into their reason for being. You could not long question the motives of 

 the enthusiastic student, and you would probably soon find yourself as 

 deeply into the problem. "You have but to look at life and you will find 

 it interesting, in whatever form, or from whatever standpoint you 

 view it." 



For the second reason I gave a hint as to the economic interest. We 

 may be charged with magnifying this side of the question, since it is 

 from the economic point that we solicit aid in carrying on the work. But 

 the United States Fish Commission would not have been organized in 

 the interests of pure science. It is supposed to deal with problems that 

 affect the food and labor of millions. There were two reasons given for 

 its creation. (1) "An investigation into the cause of the decrease of the 

 seacoast fishes and those of rivers and lakes, with suggestions as to the 

 best methods of restoring the same; and (2) active measures looking to- 

 ward the propagation and multiplication of the useful food fishes, either by 

 restocking the depleted waters, or by introducing desirable species into 

 new localities." 



Allow me to quote from Prof. Reighard on the subject. "In this 

 country the fisherman continues to fish in any locality until it becomes un- 

 profitable. He then moves his base of operations to new waters, until 

 these in turn have been exhausted. He is apt to look upon each new 

 body of water as inexhaustible, and rarely has occasion to ask himself 

 whether it is possible to determine in advance, the number of fish that he 

 may annually take from the water without depleting it. 



"On the other hand the fish culturist is likely to plant the fry in 

 waters that are quite unsuited to them; or to plant them in water far to 

 the excess of what the water can support. The fisherman proceeds as a 

 farmer might who imagined that he could continually reap without either 

 sowing or fertilizing; while the fish culturist proceeds often as if con- 

 vinced that seeds might grow on barren soil, or that two seeds might be 

 made to grow in place of one." 



Now, since the whole structure of animal life rests ultimately upon vege- 

 table life, large or small, and since most fish feed upon food produced in 

 the water, we must readily see the interdependence between the larger 

 and the smaller animals and plants. The food of our game fishes, as you 

 know is live animals. The food of these animals is no doubt smaller 



