tg 
FepERAL ContTrROL oF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERSTATE 
WATERS. 
3y BarTOoN W. EVERMANN. 
Mr. President, Members of the Academy—I shall talk a very few min- 
utes on this subject. The idea of federal control in matters pertaining to 
fisheries and game is a recent one, and one of recent and gradual develop- 
ment. I think perhaps the idea was first advanced in connection with the 
control of migratory birds. Ornithologists and cthers interested in the 
preservation of birds realized a number of years ago that the state laws 
of the various states were inadequate for the control of migratory birds. 
A bird today is in Louisiana or Alabama, tomorrow in Tennessee, next week 
in Kentucky, then Indiana, then Michigan, and the game laws in the 
different states are different. In some of these states there would be a 
law adequate for the protection of migratery birds as they went north 
or south, but in the next state into which they went there would be no law, 
so that migratory birds received very inadequate protection or no protec- 
tion at all. 
The first bill that was introduced into Congress that had any bearing 
on this question was introduced by George Shiras III, of Pittsburg. In 
this bill he proposed that the Federal government should take over the con- 
trol of the regulations for protecting migratory birds. A little later the idea 
expanded and Mr. Shiras introduced a bill in Congress providing for the 
protection of migratory fishes. His attention had been called to the fact 
that in the Atlantic coast States there is no law adequate to protect the 
shad and other migratory fishes. The dificulty existed in all of the 
streams where migratory fishes came, but particularly in those streams 
which lie between two States and which are controlled by two or more 
States. The Potomac River was taken as an illustration. The laws of 
Virginia on one side and Maryland on the other were never the same, and 
at the same time it was legal to fish in one State and illegal in the other. 
The inevitable result was a series of evasions of the law by the fishermen 
of these States. 
The Columbia River is another illustration, perhaps the most serious 
of all. There you have Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon, all con- 
