184 
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some thirty millions of young shad were artificially hatched in the year 1868, and, as. 
a consequence, the yield at the proper time was made larger than it had been since 
1¢02; or to the Hudson, in which ten millions of the same fish are hatched yearly, and 
the fishery is being rapidly restored, although it had run down until it was on the point 
of being abandoned. 
There are three facts which at once arrest the attention of the investigator into the 
art of pisciculture. In the first place, he finds that vast tracts of water are either almost 
depopulated or wholly bare of fish; not a reader of these words but can mention a 
dozen ponds or brooks which are simply stripped of all edible living creatures, while 
in other rivers or lakes the fishing has become so poor that it cannot be profitably fol- 
lowed for its yield, and is abandoned as a source of amusement. And yet the experi- 
ence of older countries and the evidence of experts prove that an acre of water can be 
made far more remunerative than an acre of land. Were a similar number of miles. 
square of valuable land equally neglected public attention would be aroused and states- 
men would be investigating the causes of such an anomaly. In a portion of France 
crops of grain or grass are regularly alternated with crops of fish—such as eels—and 
the latter are altogether the most remunerative, and yet in this country the nation’s 
boundless heritaye of water is left unimproved. Instead of increased development 
fisheries are being everywhere exhausted and waters everywhere depopulated. Efforts. 
are put forth on all hands to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, 
and the successful inventor is called a public benefactor, while ignorance, neglect, and 
perversity are permitted to destroy a supply of food but little, if any, less important 
than the most valuable single production of the earth. Many of these streams at pres- 
ent deserted were once teeming with life. When Héndrich Hudson first ascended the 
river called by his name, the shad, which he mistook for salmon, were so numerous 
that he makes mention again and again of the “great stores of salmon” he enecoun- 
tered; and when the country was first settled every brook and rivulet could furnish 
in an hour its abundant meal of trout, bass,or perch. The rivers have not changed, 
the waters have not become unwholesome; except a few incidental localities where 
pernicious employments are carried on, fish could live, increase, and multiply, as freely 
and readily now as heretofore. Here is a fit object for the attention of the learned and 
the care of the law-maker. There is no better food than that of fish, and so long as the 
words ‘the poor ye havealways with you,” hold good, it is a duty to cultivate all the 
means of supporting human life that nature has placed within the reach of man. It is 
a sin to neglect the water while so many have all they can do to draw a meager living 
from the land. 
The next point that the investigator will note with wonder is the almost infinite 
productiveness of fish. Maize yields its four or five hundred grains for one, wheat and 
oats far less, and other agricultural products. in proportion, but the codand herring lay 
millions of eggs each, w,jile the shad and striped-bass, Labraz lineatus, produce as many 
hundreds of thousands. One of the least productive varieties is that of the Salmonide, 
and yet that contains twe thousand eggs to every pound-weight of the parent; while 
the black-bass, Grystes nigricans, although comparatively not prolific, guards its eggs till 
they hatch and the young until they can care for themselves. This fecundity is start- 
ling and leads to curious conclusions. It had some wise purpose under the kind laws 
of the Creator of all things, and yet had it been unobstructed in its operations it would 
have brought about disastrous consequences. Had all the ova of the cod, and hake, and 
haddock hatched, the sea would have been a mass of fish, and foul with their putre- 
fying carcasses ; had there been no counterpoise, no compensating law of restraint, the 
pure element that is needed to sustain man’s life would have been defiled and the human 
race conld never have existed on this planet. But there were proper and effectual bal- 
ance-wheels that entirely obviated such dangers. The enemies to young fish life are 
almost as numerous as the fish themselves; older fish feed on the ova and the fry, de- 
vouring both in incalculable numbers; bugs, entmacula, the pupe of water-flies and 
myriads of insects prey upon the immature spawn, while much of it gets covered with 
mud or silt, is never impregnated, or fails for one of a thousand reasons to hatch. So 
the yield is limited, and after it has reached a certain point never varies from that with- 
out some extraneous disturbing cause, a cause which usually comes from the interference 
of man. Were the human race extinct there would just be exactly so many fish in the 
seas and the lakes and the rivers, no more, no less, and rendered invariable by the unva- 
rying law of variations, the unchanging rule of cirenmstances. So they are found to be 
in all new countries, and once were here. But man steps in, he takes the kinds he likes 
for food, he neglects the worthless and inedible, he pays no heed to minute enemies, aud 
leaves the foes of the very sorts he appropriates to increase and multiply without limit. 
What is the result? Precisely what is seen in all the inland waters of this continent, 
and what will soon be apparent in the adjoining sea. The fish have disappeared, and 
their worthless foes either occupy their place or are themselves dying for want of 
food. 
Thirdly, the investigator will observe that of all sorts of human food none is pro- 
duced so cheaply as that of fish. It costs nothing for manure, it needs no tillage it 
