62 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
is declared to be greater than the acts of the legislature, in that there was no 
compensation given to the owner of the land, hence he had a free right to the 
positive control of that creek, not only along its highway, but along the bed of 
the creek. 
Gentlemen, I can not begin to tell you what I feel for the angler of Pennsyl- 
vania. I fear that public trout fishing in the State of Pennsylvania will some 
day become a very, very expensive luxury, due to the fact that at the present 
time, unless we go to the Supreme Court of the United States, we do not know 
‘what that decision might be. We do not know whether we have any public 
fishing waters for trout in the State of Pennsylvania; and my heart goes out to 
the anglers who formerly fished those waters and who may in the future find it 
very expensive to get a little trout fishing. 
Dr. TARLETON H. BEAN (New York). I do not know whether I exactly 
understood the gentleman in his remarks about the State of Pennsylvania in 
regard to providing for the public fishing, but I ought to say that in New York, 
which appropriates, I think, about as much money for fish culture as any other 
State of the Union, no streams except public streams are provided with fish. It 
is not possible for a private owner to secure fish from the state; and when a 
stream has been stocked with fish by the state it becomes public water. There 
were 2,000 streams stocked during the last year with brook trout alone, and every 
one of those streams becomes a stream open to the public for fishing. 
Mr. A. KELLY Evans (Canada). As some reference has been made to the 
State of Maine, and I do not know that the state representative is here, I might 
point out that in that state, which undoubtedly has proved the most successful 
in turning angling and sport into an asset of great wealth to the state, amount- 
ing last year undoubtedly, from its statistics, to twenty-five millions of money 
brought into the state, its system provided this: That in any lake called a big 
pond, of a greater area than 10 acres, anyone can goand fish, even if an individual 
owns the land completely surrounding it, unless that land is cultivated. [If it is 
not cultivated and is, comparatively speaking, wild land, the only action the 
owner can take is to bring the man who comes in and fishes on the lake before 
the courts; and the owner must prove damage in his passing through that land; 
but he has no right to prevent that man from fishing in that lake. And so 
universal has that custom become in the State of Maine that no attempt is 
made by private owners to control either lakes or streams. Where this works 
out to the advantage of the state and to the fish culturist is this, that the sym- 
pathy of the public is entirely with the fish culturist and with the whole system, in 
so far as no private ownership is allowed. I may say, Mr. Chairman, that it has 
been because of the wonderful success of Maine—the money that Maine has 
shown to exist in this system—that I myself have been successful in arousing 
an agitation in the Province of Ontario, and on account of always speaking and 
voting for holding the waters open to the public I have thereby received the 
