PROGRESS IN BIOLOGICAL INQUIRIES, 1936 31 
were drawn up for the Conservation Departments of several States. 
Special effort has been put forth to introduce the flexible steel rule 
developed by the National Bureau of Standards and the Bureau of 
Fisheries for the measurement of mesh in gil! nets. It is believed 
that with the uniform adoption of this flexible rule many of the con- 
troversies concerning the size of mesh in gill nets will be definitely 
settled. 
Little progress has been made in the enactment of uniform fishery 
legislation on the various lakes, although three conferences, at each 
of which the Bureau was represented, were held during the year 
with that objective in view. The first of these conferences was held 
at Chicago, Ill., on January 6-7, 1936, when members of the 
National Planning Council of Commercial and Game Fish Commis- 
sioners of the North Central Zone discussed the adoption of uniform 
laws for the commercial fisheries of Lake Michigan and Lake Supe- 
rior. On February 4 and 6, 1936, representatives of the Province 
of Ontario and of the States fronting Lake Erie conferred at Wash- 
ington, D. C., reaching the conclusion that control by an international 
commission governed by a treaty with Canada offers the only prac- 
ticable means of saving the fisheries. A method of procedure to 
obtain this international control was adopted, but no concrete results 
have followed. At a conference held on March 16 and 17, 1936, at 
Toronto, Ontario, between the Province of Ontario and the State of 
Michigan, uniform regulations of the commercial fisheries of Lake 
Huron were discussed and a tentative agreement was reached regard- 
ing the size of mesh in gill nets used for chubs and the size limit of 
yellow perch. At all of these conferences the various representatives 
reached a common understanding on the need of uniform regulations 
on each of the Great Lakes and on the more important legislation 
that should be adopted. The various State legislatures, however, have 
consistently failed to enact into law the recommendations that have 
resulted from such conferences. 
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the authorities of the Univer- 
sity of Michigan for laboratory space provided and for many other 
courtesies extended to the staff at Ann Arbor. 
FISHERY STATISTICS 
The detailed analysis of commercial fishery statistics of the Great 
Lakes waters under the jurisdiction of the State of Michigan was 
continued through 1936. The most important items of progress 
were the completion of summaries for Lake Superior, 1929-84; the 
tabulation of basic data and the preparation of summaries for all 
areas, 1935; the completion of the study of the relationship between 
fishing time and size of lift; the development of more concise methods 
of measuring and expressing fluctuations in abundance and produc- 
tion of fish and in the intensity of the fishery; and the application of 
statistical data on the yellow pike-perch to the question of the effec- 
tiveness of artificial propagation of the species. 
In Progress in Biological Inquiries, 1935, it was suggested that it 
might prove unnecessary to include a consideration of the fishing 
time of stationary gear in the preparation of statistical data for 
the estimation of fluctuations in abundance of commercial species in 
