4 REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 



partments of the United States and the several States and Territories, 

 compiled by the United States Bureau of Fisheries, is submitted in 

 Appendix A, and a copy of the fisheries laws of Rhode Island is given 

 in Appendix B. 



Your commission has pursued in general the same course as in the 

 past few years. Forty thousand yearling trout, four hundred small- 

 mouth black bass, five hundred large-mouth black bass, and three 

 million shad have l^een distributed. The beneficial results of stock- 

 ing the fresh waters with these edible fishes become more -evident 

 each year and are at the present time beyond cjuestion. It is not 

 feasible to patrol constantly the widely scattered fishing waters of the 

 State, and the success of the stocking of these streams and the main- 

 tenance of the fishing must necessarily depend to a considerable ex- 

 tent upon the cooperation of the anglers, and this cooperation your 

 commission has endeavored to enlist. 



The work of the commission at the laboratory at Wickford has 

 progressed steadily. The main stress has been laid upon the rearing 

 of lobsters and clams, not merely because of the importance of these 

 fisheries, but because the experience of several years has yielded 

 methods which insure good results. On the other hand, experiments 

 are being made with other branches of the fisheries in the expectation 

 that these also will gradually be brought under similar control. 



Recognition of the value of studying and developing fisheries 

 methods is rapidl}^ growing in every civilized country. Rhode 

 Island possesses extraordinary advantages in respect to her fishing 

 industry. These advantages are in general very obvious; never- 

 theless they increase in importance on closer inspection, and the meth- 

 ods worked out for one branch of the industry point out clearly new 

 possibilities for another. 



Your commission has for many years worked in cordial cooperation 

 with the United States Bureau of Fisheries. It is in active corre- 

 spondence with the Fisheries Bureaus of most European countries 

 and with that of Japan, "the paramount fishing nation," and, we 

 believe, we can learn much of value by keeping in touch and cooper- 



