522 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
This is the only passage, but a very important one, in Katsaras’s work, 
which indicates that the diving apparatus is likewise very harmful to the repro- 
duction of sponges. 
Katsards gives other specific advice: 
I advise the affected divers to dive daily for two or ‘three months to a depth of 8, 
ro, and 12 fathoms, staying under water from fifteen to thirty minutes; and to vary the 
treatment by compressed air for one month by first cautiously eliminating the pressure, 
and then resuming it again, etc. * * * The authorities of these sponge-fishing 
islands should therefore establish small hospitals on the seacoast in order to introduce 
the systematic treatment with compressed air by means of the diving apparatus. Each 
small hospital ought to possess 2 or 3 apparatuses for this purpose, and other treatment 
should be included. 
Can anything be more obnoxious and futile than this system? Rendering 
men ill in order to cure them, and recommending to them a trade with such 
precautions that it must cost more than it would yield? Katsards has likewise 
failed to give statistics of deaths; he contents himself with far too mild a state- 
ment when he says on page 2 ‘‘ No year goes by without at least 10 dead.” 
Katsards wrote as a clever physician, leaving others to apply his results. 
These others are in the first place the authorities of the localities and countries 
in which the sponge divers live, and in the second place the authorities of the 
countries in which the abuse is practiced, and unfortunately they pay no atten- 
tion to the work of the great scientist. It has therefore brought scarcely any 
aid to the unfortunates to whose weal it is dedicated. Only by enforcing the 
important logical deduction from the excellent work of Katsaras can the solution 
of this question and the salvation of these unfortunates be brought about. The 
diving apparatus in sponge fishing must be prohibited, a thing which has now 
taken place in some countries, thanks to the pains we have taken. 
ATTITUDE OF THE GOVERNMENTS. 
As already stated, my work in behalf of the sponge divers began with my 
visit to Kalymnos in 1892. My plan was to appeal to the governments of each 
of the sponge-producing countries of the Mediterranean Sea, beginning with 
the smaller and nearer ones and going to the larger and more distant, and 
including countries without sponge fisheries, but with sponge beds, as well as 
those with sponge fisheries with and without machine diving. According to 
this programme, after Kalymnos came Samos, Crete, Cyprus, Egypt, Tunis, 
Italy, Austria-Hungary, Greece, and Turkey, all of which except Tunis I visited 
in person. It will be best to discuss first the conditions in Greece. 
GREECE. 
The sponge fishermen of Greece live at Kranidion, of 8,000 inhabitants, 
and Hermione, of 2,000 inhabitants, on the Argolic Peninsula, at Hydra with 
