60 American Fisheries Society 



ance of these things. They should be encouraged to promote more 

 extensive development of fish cultural operations, both in public 

 waters by special concessions and particularly in private waters 

 under beneficial laws by public and private capital. It is possible 

 in many projects, where the waters are now used for the irrigating 

 of land, to interpolate ponds in these irrigation systems where the 

 water could be used for rearing fish and then passed on from the 

 fish ponds into the ditches to irrigate the land in the usual manner. 

 The person who may wish to develop ponds frequently cannot 

 afford to put in a permanent and satisfactory water supply at his 

 own expense, but the great reservoirs of the United States Reclama- 

 tion Service might in many cases be utilized, after the requisite 

 legislation has been enacted and the proper regulations made for 

 supplying fish ponds. It would mean a tremendous extension of 

 the wise utilization of this water for producing food. In the case 

 of the irrigation projects, this double utilization of water would 

 mean an additional source of income, as the owner of the fish pond 

 could afford, as well as the person irrigating the land, to pay a 

 reasonable sum for the use of the water. 



Improved methods of distribution and marketing fish are still 

 imperatively necessary, in spite of the fact that great progress has 

 been made in the past five years. Enormous quantities of shrimp, 

 lobsters and crabs, among the shell-fish, and of all species of fish, 

 are still wasted. Of this you need no better evidence than can be 

 found in any of the fish markets in the large cities. Even within 

 twenty-four hours of the mouth of the Columbia River, I was 

 warned that it was positively dangerous to eat fish on any day 

 except Friday or Saturday, for the reason that the supply came in 

 only on Thursday night. On Friday and Saturday it was safe, 

 but after that there was positive danger of ptomaine poisoning. 

 That is within twenty-four hours of the supply of a main original 

 source of salmon, halibut and Pacific cod; and more than that, it 

 is in the center of an area abounding in mountain streams and 

 extensive lakes. 



It is perhaps unnecessary at this point to speak of the import- 

 ance of state and federal hatcheries and rearing ponds on public 

 waters. There should be an extension of methods of practice of 

 caring for the ripe fish caught for market both on the lakes and on 



