INTERNATIONAL FISHERIES COMMISSION. 185 
4 years old, all individuals, male and female, dying soon after the first spawn- 
ing. In this case the fish are valuable only when about to leave the sea, or 
in the lower courses of the rivers. When the spawn and milt is ripe the flesh 
of the fish is worthless. Here the problem is to allow fish enough to escape the 
nets and to ascend the rivers to cover the spawning grounds and to keep the 
hatcheries occupied. The most valuable of these species in international 
waters, the red salmon, spawns only in streams at the head of lakes. In 
Puget Sound the supply has been greatly depleted by overfishing. Under 
such circumstances nothing is gained by statutes regulating the size of fish. 
The only thing to be done is to establish seasonal or weekly closed periods, 
when a certain large number shall have opportunity to pass up to the lakes. 
In this case, nearly all the spawning grounds are in Canadian territory in the 
tributaries of Fraser River. 
The black bass is the type of still another group of fishes. The male bass 
maintains his own hatchery. The eggs can not be stripped and hatched by 
artificial means. The male fish builds a nest, and the fertilized eggs are deposited 
in it. Then he stands guard over them, driving away all intruders, including 
the mother bass, until the hatching is complete. Then he eats some of his own 
young—let us hope the least active, as a contribution to natural selection— 
while the rest escape. No artificial improvement over his method is possible. 
In this case protection consists in preventing the catching of the immature fish 
and the absolute preservation of the spawning grounds from intrusion of net 
or hook. 
Another class contains predatory fish like the wall-eye and perch, spawning 
in spring in warming waters, but susceptible of assistance through artificial 
hatching. In general, these are adequately protected by the law of the size 
limit, by which the immature fishes are kept from the markets. Sometimes, 
however, nets must be kept out of the line of their spring migrations. 
Still another class is composed of the sturgeon. It reaches a great size, and 
when running to its spawning beds in the spring is an easy victim to the pot 
hunter. The vast majority of the sturgeons in our lakes have been killed for 
the eggs, which are made into caviar. The sturgeon thus far has resisted the 
attempts at artificial propagation, by reason of certain peculiarities of its own. 
When ripe the eggs and milt are thrown as soon as the fish is touched. When 
the eggs and milt are unripe they die without maturing if the fish is confined in 
a pond. With the sturgeon there is but one method of artificial increase—to 
prevent all killing for a series of years, corresponding to the years of unlimited 
slaughter. 
To protect for their greatest usefulness the varying groups of fishes, in 
all the lakes, rivers, and seas of our northern boundary, is the task of the Inter- 
national Fisheries Commission. In so far as this commission is successful, it 
