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lation thus far, and the example of each might well 

 serve as a beacon for all other states. But year after 

 year passes and border waters still remain unguarded 

 to a very great extent. 



Maryland is now making efforts through her State 

 Fish Protective Association and her commissioners 

 to join with Pennsylvania in protecting the Susque- 

 hanna and its great tributary branches. They have 

 already succeeded in exterminating all authorized 

 means for fishing in this great river which runs through 

 Maryland territory, where the objectionable pounds 

 and wiers once almost depopulated the upper waters of 

 this valuable fish, the shad, just as it was aiming to 

 reach the breeding places along the upper branches of 

 the Susquehanna. 



The Potomac is yet but partially guarded. Mary- 

 land has passed a law, which applies to the Potomac 

 and its tributary rivers, forbidding fishing from April 

 15th to June ist, but it has thus far only received the 

 co-operation of Virginia, and the law cannot be prop- 

 erly enforced until West Virginia laws concur in the 

 project. Thus two inter-state laws are held somewhat 

 inoperative, each because of the non-concurrence of one 

 single state for each in a compact which would in real- 

 ity receive equal advantage if they would but study 

 the matter with unbiased consideration. Delaware evi- 

 dently holds back because she has the opportunity of 

 access to the large schools of fish as they turn with 

 unwavering instinct toward the calm, pure, shallow 

 waters of the upper Delaware River and its communi- 

 cating streams in Southern New York and Northern 

 Pennsylvania. But can the state of Delaware claim 

 the same commercial value for the fish as she takes 

 them, and the same fish as taken in the upper stream 

 under the protective laws of the three adjoining states? 

 I think prices will and must speak ; and this very 

 season we have some proof Before the legalized sea- 



