EEGULATION OF THE SEA-FISHERIES BY LAW. 03 



time. On the coutraiy, all the evidence there was proved that they 

 returned annually to the .same grounds to si)awn. 



All there is u))()n this point comes from Mr. Atwood himself, after the 

 evidence is closed, when he, "laying- aside the evidence," becomes a 

 witness before the senate of jNIassachusetts, and gives a very interesting 

 account of what he had "noticed during a long life of practical experi- 

 ence in the fisheries." 



This covers a period of fifty-one years, and is very important in this 

 investigation, because it is the testimony of Hon. N. E. Atwood, of whom 

 the Ehode Island commission says, he is a "practical fishernum of Pro- 

 vincetown, and a distinguished ichthyologist;" because, say the com- 

 missioners on inland fisheries in JMassachusetts, it is the opinion "of a 

 man who probably knows more of the habits of our cold temperate sea- 

 fishes than any one in the country." 



We have no longer ignorant and prejudiced fishermen on the stand, 

 who "possess only a local knowledge of the fish with which they come 

 in contact; who do not make the habits of fish a special study; who do 

 not know one-half of what they ought to know;" but the great ichthyol- 

 ogist and the intelligent fisherman of fifty years' })ractical experience. 



Let us see what "changes he has noticed" going to show that these 

 fishes — the fishes uiuler consideration ; not other fishes, but the scup, 

 tautog, sea-bass, and striped bass — have, or may have, merely left the 

 localities they once frequented. 



He first alhides to the scup, of v/hicli he is "informed that in examin- 

 ing the old shell-heaps that have been deposited by the aborigines, 

 man}' years ago, the bones of this species have been found, showing 

 that they were here before this country was settled by the Europeans." 



If they were here then, it is quite as probable that they have remained 

 here ever since, as that the "tradition" is true that thev appeared in 

 Buzzard's Bay m 1793. 



The witnesses who stated that they had such tradition were the 

 same witnesses of whose testimony on other points Mr. Atwood thought 

 so little; and the tradition itself may, for aught we know, have had 

 reference to some other species ; but what is a great deal more probable 

 is, that they then first began to be considerably fished for. 



At all events, this is very feeble evidence to supi)ort a theory that 

 this species of fish has appeared and then disappeared, driven away by 

 none other than the "Indians, with their rude implements of fishing." 



Since 1793 Mr. Atwood gives us no information that ever}" year, ibr a 

 period of more than (seventy years, they have not, until recently, been 

 abundant. And there was no evidence before the Ilhode Island com- 

 mittee that they had not existed in the waters of Narragansett Bay 

 since the settlement of the country, which, if they had not, would cer- 

 tainly have appeared, since the people of that State have always been 

 interested in the subject of the fisheries, from the "earliest authentic 

 history of the colony." As early as 1719 the general assembly passed 

 an enabling act empowering each town council "to take care for the 

 preservation of the fishery within their respective jurisdiction, and to 

 remove all obstructions made in any rivers that may i^rejudice the 

 inhabitants by stopping of fish from going up the stream." 



The only other fish of the species under consideration of which Mr. 

 Atwood gives us any information, is the striped bass, of which he says, 

 that they have diminished in the vicinity of Cape Cod, as the blue-fish 

 have destroyed the bait upon which they feed. This is only admitting 

 the fact of the scarcity of these fish, and begging the question as to the 

 cause of it. 



