18 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



Numerous illustrations of the propositions here enunciated will be 

 found in the portions of the present article devoted to the considera- 

 tion of particular kinds of fish found in American waters. There is 

 practically no difficulty in even a dense population finding its subsist- 

 ence in the sea, both as regards the food necessary for daily consump- 

 tion and for the means of securing either necessities or luxuries by 

 means of a trade in the same commodity, this fish supply being furnished 

 and maintained without the necessity of any previous cultivation or 

 care, nature providing for the successions of the crop, and leaving it 

 ouly to man to gather its full perfection. A spear, the bow and arrow, 

 a hook and line, a boat, even of the simplest and most primitive char- 

 acter, possibly even a floating log, will answer the necessary purpose; 

 while the more extended investments of nets, weirs, and pounds, vessels 

 for going a considerable distance to sea or even sailing to distant 

 waters, are generally within the reach of (he successful fisherman or a 

 combination of several of them. 



The case is very different on the land, where only a nomadic people 

 can derive support from the wild game or fowl, and this scarcely more 

 than sufficient for daily food and clothing, leaving but little for sale or 

 export. As the population increases, this food becomes scarce and is 

 either exterminated or driven away, so that it offers but a scanty pro- 

 vision for the sustaining of life. It is then necessary to resort to the 

 arts of the agriculturist ; the laud must be cleared and tilled, the seed 

 sown, and a harvest obtained, sometimes after many months of waiting, 

 and with a chance, unfortunately too often realized, of a partial or total 

 destruction of the whole by storm, rain, hail, drought, blight, or destruc- 

 tive insects. Even at best, too, only a small margin of annual profit is 

 left after the interest on the investment and other deductions are made 

 from the proceeds ; and although the farmer who controls a large 

 body of land and works it by labor-saving machinery, or can gather in 

 a large aggregate of the small proceeds of individual laborers, may ac- 

 quire a competence and even wealth in time, yet comparing the profits 

 of a laborer who has but a small tract of land at his command with 

 those of the fisherman who has the sea for many miles under his con- 

 trol, we shall find the actual results to be very different in the two cases. 



Fishing, as an occupation, in fresh waters, is much less remunerative 

 than the same business prosecuted in the sea, as by the limitation of area 

 the supply becomes sooner exhausted, and is under the influence of cli- 

 matic and physical conditions and the direct agencies of man. So far 

 as the rivers are concerned, it is only where they are in connection with 

 large interior lakes, which take the place to them of oceans, that the 

 most favorable conditions for the fresh-water fisheries are to be met 

 with; and the great lakes themselves, such as those along the northern 

 border of the United States, by their vast extent and great depth, are 

 really, for all practical purposes, simply oceans, and furnish trout, white- 

 fish, sturgeon, and other species in enormous numbers. Even here, 



