86 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
have been administered by the respective States on this side of the line and by the 
Provinces on the other side, in some cases jointly by the Provinces and the Dominion 
Government. 
Lake Erie may be taken as an illustration. On the American side are the States 
of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan; on the other side the Province of 
Ontario. Each of those governments has exercised control over a certain portion of 
Lake Erie. The laws or statutes in no two of those States or provinces have been 
uniform. As a result, interminable and very irritating conflicts arise every year. 
Because of that situation, recently the United States and Great Britain entered into a 
treaty, the terms of which provided for the appointment of an international fisheries 
commission to look over the ground, to find out what the local conditions are, and to 
recommend to the respective governments proper statutes which would regulate in a 
proper way the fisheries of these international waters. The treaty named specifically 
the waters which were to be considered by this joint commission. The treaty also 
provided that this international fisheries commission should write the statutes, define 
what should be the terms under which fishing may be carried on in these various waters, 
and that they should submit their report to the respective governments not later than the 
31st of December next. Then it is understood that the statutes written by that com- 
mission will be promulgated by the respective governments and the necessary steps taken 
for the enforcement of the regulations agreed upon. 
The short time that was allowed the commission to consider these matters was 
embarrassing, of course. To allow them only until the 31st of December seemed a very 
short time; at first blush it seemed that it was almost useless to attempt to do anything, 
but the commission entered upon its investigations at Eastport, Me., the 7th of July. 
After a few days the situation cleared up very materially. I may say that the commis- 
sion took as the basis from which to work the most admirable report made by the Rath- 
bun-Wakeham commission of 1892-1896. Those two gentlemen, as high joint commis- 
sioners, representing the two governments, Canada and the United States, went over 
the ground during each of four years and made a very thorough and very sane report 
as to the conditions, and then closed their consideration of each of the international 
waters with a statement embodying what they thought were the proper recommenda- 
tions necessary to be carried out for the proper regulation of the fisheries of that partic- 
ular body of water. Using that as a basis, the present international commission was 
able to make much more rapid progress and to understand the situation much more 
readily and much more thoroughly than at first seemed possible. After interviewing a 
few hundred fishermen it was easy to tell what the next fisherman would say, so that 
the matter became simple. I may say, simply, that this international commission, 
consisting of David Starr Jordan, of Stanford University, California, and Samuel T. 
Bastedo, of Canada, with myself as associate, went over the entire boundary, visiting 
all of the important fisheries, and the commission is now writing its statutes and will 
have its report ready for the respective governments by the end of December. 
What I want to call to your attention particularly is this: Practically all of the 
difficult problems which came to the attention of this commission were biological prob- 
lems. ‘They are problems which can not be settled or solved offhand. They are prob- 
lems which can be settled or which can be understood only through a series of careful 
observations; the time of the spawning of the different species of fishes, the food of 
the different species of food fishes, and I may say, and strangely, just what are the 
species of food fishes in the Great Lakes. They are not what they are said to be in the 
books. ‘There is a discrepancy; there are several discrepancies, in fact. So that the 
problems which must be studied from now on, which will need to be studied in order 
to revise and revamp the statutes from time to time, as the international commission 
has authority to do, are problems of that character; and they will have to be taken up 
from year to year to keep the statutes up with the ever-changing conditions. 
