WINTER MEETING. 273 



be overcome by the coustruction of fieh-ladders designed to meet the 

 requirements of the laws of phjsics and the possibilities of fishes. 



The protection of fish by law is what governments have been try- 

 ing to effect for many years, centuries, and it must be admitted that 

 the success of their (-fforts have been very slight indeed. In the 

 United States public opinion is generally antagonistic to fishery legis- 

 lation, and the Commission, after twenty-five years of investigation, has 

 not yet recommended to Congress enactment of any description. Even 

 a running mention of the celebrated cases of fishery controversy, not 

 to mention those of international importance, would be wearisome to 

 yon. The Halifax Commission and the late Paris Tribunal are the 

 most important of latter years. 



Just here we meet the test problem in fish culture. Many of the 

 most important commercial fisheries of the world — the cod, herring, 

 shad and ale-wife, mullet, salmon, whitefish, smelt, and many other 

 fisheries — owe their existence to the fact that once a year these fishes 

 gather closely together in swimming schools to spawn in shallow water. 

 There is a large school of so-called economists who clamor for the com- 

 plete prohibition of fishing during spawning time. Their demand demon- 

 strates their ignorance. Deer, game, birds and other land animals 

 may easily be protected during the breeding season ; so may trout, 

 bass and other fish of strictly local habits. Xot so the anadromous 

 and sea fishes. If they are not caught in the spawning season they 

 cannot be caught at all. The fallacy in the argument of these men lies 

 in part in supposing that it is more destructive to the progeny of a 

 given fish to kill it when its eggs are nearly ripe than to kill the same 

 fish eight or ten months earlier. 



The counter-argument, however, is not to beiguored. Such is the 

 mortality among fish that only an infinitesimal percentage attain to 

 maturity. Professor Mobius has shown that for every grown oyster 

 on the beds 1,045,000 have died. It is probable that a not larger per- 

 centage of very many of our fishes come on the spawning grounds 

 Some consideration then, ought to be shown to these individuals who 

 have escaped from their enemies and who have come to deposit the 

 precious burden of eggs. As I before stated, here is one of the test 

 problems: How much must they be protected"? It is here that the 

 fishculturist — men of my calling — step in with the proposition "that 

 it is cheaper to make fish so plenty by artificial means, that every 

 fisherman may take all he can catch, than to enforce a code of protec- 

 tion laws." 



H— 18 



