CALIFOENIA FISH AND GAME. 63 



widespread as to be almost universal, and among the rural population 

 there is a general opinion that game protective laws are designed to 

 furnish sport for city men at the expense of the rights of the country 

 people. For this reason the game laws are very commonly looked on 

 as something very much like acts of tyranny, and disobedience of them 

 is regarded somewhat in the light of heroism. It should be remembered 

 that laws are but the crystallized expression of public opinion, and if 

 there be no public opinion favoring a law, or if public opinion be 

 opposed to a law, merely placing a legislative act on the statute book 

 will not produce any result. It is therefore necessary to create an 

 enlightened public opinion in favor of laws for the conservation of 

 fishes, and when this is done the enforcement of the laws will be both 

 easy and effective. 



Our society can aid in the development of this public opinion both 

 as a collection of well informed individuals interested in this movement 

 and as an organization. Our members come from many of the states 

 of the Union, and among them are state and national officials, college 

 professors, commercial fishermen, scientists and sportsmen ; in brief, 

 every aspect of the fishery question is represented among us. We are 

 not sectional and we have no selfish nor class interests to serve, and 

 consequently we are in better position to spread the knowledge of fish 

 life among the people than would be any trade organization or even 

 a purely scientific society. As individuals it would be well for us to 

 write papers for the press; not merely for the big city papers, the 

 sporting magazines and the fish trade journals, but for the country 

 weeklies that go out among the masses of the rural population. If 

 we were to write articles that are scientifically accurate; that are 

 interestingly put, and above all, are not "in a tongue not understanded 

 of the people," many of our members would be surprised to see how 

 eagerly they will be read and what an effect they will produce. One 

 of the main reasons that societies such as ours have so little effect 

 on public opinion is that the subjects that we discuss and the language 

 in which we discuss them are uninteresting and unintelligible to most 

 of the people outside of our own narrow circle. It is hard for us, who 

 have given much of our time and effort to the acquirement of a special 

 line of knowledge, to appreciate that what is merely elementary to us 

 is an unknown and fascinating world to many intelligent men outside 

 of the ranks of professional naturalists. How many of these people 

 could tell how a fish egg is impregnated and how it develops? How 

 many can tell anything of the life history of even the commonest 

 fishes? The knowledge — if indeed it can be called knowledge — that 

 most persons have of such subjects is a mass of traditional lore, resting 

 on misinformation as a basis, that is so far from the truth that to 

 call a tale a "fish story" is equivalent to saying that it is false. By 

 putting the known facts of fish life clearly and accurately before the 

 intelligent people of our country, we would make hundreds of practical 

 students of the natural history of fishes where none are today, and 

 nearly every one of them would become an active aid in the conser- 

 vation movement. 



