[11] THE STATUS OF THE.FtSS COMMISSION. 1149 



their efforts has beeu vcjy slight indeed. Great Britain has at present 

 two schools of fishery economists, the one headed by Professor Huxley, 

 opposed to legislation, save for the preservation of fish in inland waters, 

 the other, of which Dr. Francis Day is the chief leader, advocating also 

 a strenuous legal regulation of sea fisheries. Continental Europe is by 

 tradition and belief committed to the last-named policy. In the United 

 States, on the contrary, public opinion is generally antagonistic to 

 fishery legislation, and our Commissioner of Fisheries after carrying on 

 for fourteen years investigations upon this very question has not yet 

 become satisfied that laws are necessary for the perpetuation of the sea 

 fisheries, nor has he ever recommended to Congress enactment of any 

 description. 



Just here we meet the test problem in fish culture. Many of the 

 most imi)ortant commercial fisheries of the world, the cod-fishery, the 

 herring-fishery, the sardine-fishery, the shad and alewife fishery, the 

 mullet-fishery, the salmon-fishery, the whitetish-fishery, the smelt-fish- 

 ery, and many others, owe their existence to the fact that once a year 

 these fishes gather together in closely swimming schools, to spawn in 

 shallow water, on shoals, or in estuaries and rivers. There is a large 

 school of quasi economists who clamor for the complete prohibition of 

 fishing during spawning time. Their demand demonstrates their igno- 

 rance. Deer, game, birds, and other land animals may easily be pro- 

 tected in the breeding season, so may trout and other fishes of strictly 

 local habits. Not so the anadroraous and pelagic fishes. If they are 

 not caught in the spawning season, they cannot be caught at all. I 

 heard a prominent fish culturist recently advocating before a committee 

 of the United States Senate the view that shad should not be caught 

 in the rivers because they came into the rivers to spawn. When asked 

 what would become of our immense shad-fisheries if this were done, 

 he said that doubtless some ingenious person would invent a means of 

 catching them at sea. 



The fallacy in the argument of these men lies in part in supposing that 

 it is more destructive to the progeny of a given fish to kill it when its 

 eggs are nearly ripe, than to kill the same fish eight or ten months 

 earlier. 



We must not, however, ignore the counter-argument. Such is the 

 mortality among fish that only an infinitesimal percentage attains to ma- 

 turity. Professor Mobius has shown that for every grown oyster upon 

 the beds of Schleswig-Holstein 1,045,000 have died. Only a very small 

 proportion, perhaps not greater than this, of the shad or the smelt ever 

 comes upon the breeding grounds. Some consideration, then, ought to 

 be shown to those individuals which have escaped from their enemies 

 and have come up to deposit the precious burden of eggs. How much 

 must they be protected 'i 



1 quote from the Commissioners Eeport for 1882, the following mem- 

 oranda of what the Fish Commission hopes to accomi)lish in time, in 

 connection with this department of its work. 



