18 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. | 
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Numerous illustrations of the propositions here enunciated will be © 
found in the portions of the present article devoted to the considera- — 
tion of particular kinds of fish found in American waters. There is — 
practically no difficulty in even a dense population finding its subsist- 
ence in the sea, both as regards the food necessary for daily consump- 
tion and for the means of securing either necessities or luxuries by 
means of a trade in the same commodity, this fish supply being furnished | 
and maintained without the necessity of any previous cultivation or 
care, nature providing for the successions of the crop, and leaving it 
only to man to gather its full perfection. A spear, the bow and arrow, ; 
a hook and line, a boat, even of the simplest and most primitive char- 
acter, possibly even a floating log, will answer the necessary purpose ; 
while the more extended investments of nets, weirs, and pounds, vessels 
for going a considerable distance to sea or even sailing to distant 
waters, are generally within the reach of the successful fisherman or a 
combination of several of them. 
The case is very different on the land, where only a nomadic people 
can derive support from the wild game or fowl, and this scarcely more 
than sufficient for daily food and clothing, leaving but little for sale or 
export. As the population increases, this food becomes scarce and is , 
either exterminated or driven away, so that it offers but a scanty pro- 
vision for the sustaining of life. It is then necessary to resort to the 
arts of the agriculturist ; the land must be cleared and tilled, the seed 
sown, and a harvest obtained, sometimes after many months of waiting, 
and with a chance, unfortunately too often realized, of a partial or total 
destruction of the whole by storm, rain, hail, drought, blight, or destruc- 
tive insects. Even at best, too, only a small margin of annual profit is 
left after the interest on theinvestment and other deductions are made 
from the proceeds; and although the farmer who controls a large 
body of land and works it by labor-saving machinery, or can gather in- 
a large aggregate of the small proceeds of individual laborers, may ac- 
quire a competence and even wealth in time, yet comparing the profits 
of a laborer who has but a small tract of land at his command with 
those of the fisherman who has the sea for many miles under his con- 
trol, we shall tind the actual results to be very different in the two cases. 
Fishing, as an occupation, in fresh waters, is much less remunerative 
than the same business prosecuted in the sea, as by the limitation of area 
the supply becomes sooner exhausted, and is under the influence of cli 
matic and physical conditions and the direct agencies of man. _So fa 
as the rivers are concerned, it is only where they are in connection with 
large interior lakes, which take the place to them of oceans, that th 
most favorable conditions for the fresh-water fisheries are to be me 
with; and the great: lakes themselves, such as those along the norther 
border of the United States, by their vast extent and great depth, ar 
really, for all practical purposes, simply oceans, and furnish trout, white 
fish, sturgeon, and other species in enormous numbers. Even bere. 
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