REGULATION OF THE SEA-FISIIEEIES BY LAW. 97 



serve any injurious effects upon the fishes swimming in it. Allen says, 

 " Waters are not impure on fisbiug-orounds that I am used to; would 

 know if it was." Bassett says, " Barrington liiver was always tamous 

 scup-ground ; Kickamuit Kiver the same. I cannot find a person who 

 knows of any impurities in those waters that were not there fifty years 

 ago ;" and, again, " 1 think the water south of Stone l)ridge as pure as the 

 ocean." No witness, in all the thirty-nine, save Mr. Benjamin K, Tall- 

 man, the inventor of the traps, and Mr. Munro, of Portsmouth, also 

 a trapper, who, in July, 1S68, once in a while could seen, fish (menhaden) 

 on Pawtucket River come up on the top of the water, gape, and turn 

 on its side and die. He supposed the cause of this was impurity of the 

 w ater. Had been there for several years before 1808, and was there in 

 1809, but never saw any other instance of fish dying in this way on that 

 river. 



So the comraittee reported that, "in certain localities, doubtless the 

 waters are impure; but the pollution does not extend so far by any 

 means as some persons in all honesty contend." 



One witness from East Greenwich, a fisherman, says, " The water is as 

 pure as ever. My fish will keep as long near where tlie print-works 

 water comes into the cove as anywhere, and clams, quahogs, &c.,are as 

 plenty as they have been for forty years." 



The known reputation of Providence Biver oysters in the market for 

 excellence of quality and tiavor is another significant fact in the way of 

 those who would account for the scarcity of fish from the injurious effect 

 of poisonous substances thrown into the water from large cities. 



And in Massachusetts no inqiurities could get into Buzzard's Bay or 

 Vineyard Sound, except from New Bedford, ?nd nothing deleterious 

 goes into the Acushnet River, except from one petroleum factory and a 

 copper- works, which did not thirty years ago. The Prussian-blue works 

 has sent its refuse into that river for more than thirty-five years, and 

 yet more was said about that than of any other of the causes. 



It is a little renmrkable that we hear of no destruction of the fishes 

 from impurities in the waters of the Hudson or East Rivers, nor in the 

 waters of Long Island, nor in the Schuylkill or Delaware. 



Only when traps are set in the bays and arms of the great sea are the 

 fishes diminished by the impurity of the w\'iters. 



Even Mr. Atwood could not be made to consent to this, and closes all 

 the avenues to such an argument wiien he says, " But in the great sea 

 man cannot i)ollute its waters by anything he can do." 



Besides, if the pollution of the waters was, and is, a sufficient cause for 

 the scarcity of fish, we should naturally expect to find the fish to become 

 most scarce in the waters most affected, while the fact is that they have 

 diminished just as rapidly in localities where there are not known to be 

 any impurities which did not exist fifty years ago, and from that time 

 ever since. 



Lastly, the blue-fish as a cause of the scarcity. " But," says the Mas- 

 sachusetts committee, "the great cause that has driven many species of 

 fish from our waters is the blue-fish ;" and iu support of this Mr. Atwood, 

 in his speech, says: "But the great change that has taken place in our 

 fisheries has been caused by the return of the blue-fish." 



In his very interesting account of this fish, we are told that they fre- 

 quented our waters in 1703 and 1704, in which latter year, coincident Avith 

 ai great pestilence which visited the island of Nantucket, the blue-fish 

 disappeared, and Mr. Atwood has no knowdedge of a specimen having 

 been seen here for more than seventy years. "About 183i5 they reap- 

 peared along the south shores of Cape Cod, but did not ajjpear on the 



S. Mis. 61 7 



