28 BULLETIN OP THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



enabled to pursue a profitable occupation — catching, 

 selling, and exporting the fish. To enable one to appre- 

 ciate the value of this industry it is only necessary 

 to state that the salmon, bass, shad, smelt, and alewife, 

 are among these annual migrants ; and hence the impor- 

 tance of preserving free from obstruction and pollution 

 the great provincial waterways, which attract and dis- 

 tribute them throughout tlie interior. 



The sea-going forms, however abundant and valuable, 

 constitute only a part of the rich and varied fish-fauna 

 of the province, for the more inland water-system is the 

 home of a variety of food-fishes more or less peculiar to 

 fresh water, such as the whitefish, cusk, togue, winninish, 

 trout and perch, which are thus accessible to the popula- 

 tion beyond the range of the more anadromous forms. 

 In addition, the waters teem with many smaller species, 

 not directly valuable as food-fishes, but of much economic 

 importance as furnishing food for the more highly prized 

 species. In this way the whole ichthyology of a region 

 becomes a system of life, whose parts are so mutually 

 essential, so balanced and correlated, that any disturb- 

 ance, the thoughtless destruction of even the most insig- 

 nificant forms, may re-act fatally on the whole. To 

 preserve, then, nature's healthy balance, and maintain 

 undiminished the supply of food-fishes, call for an in- 

 timate knowledge of the whole ichthyology of the region 

 in question. 



Thus, from an economic as well as scientific view, 

 I^ew Brunswick holds out many inducements to students 

 of nature and to practical investigators as well, to examine 

 its varied fish-life with the view of solving the many 

 difiicult problems bearing on the healthy maintenance of 

 one of its chief industries and sources ot wealth. So far 

 the results have been disappointing ; the ichthyology of 



