CONCERNING THE PROTECTION OF FISH, FISH FOOD 

 AND INLAND WATERS.* 



By Dr. James Alexander Henshall, 

 Cincinnati, Ohio. 



It may be well to say, in the first place, that, of equal importance 

 with the proper protection of fish, and the replenishment of waters, 

 is the proper protection of the waters themselves and the fish 

 food they contain. Indeed, there are those who deem the latter 

 measure of more real and permanent benefit than artificial stocking. 

 They urge that if the waters are kept free of pollution, and practi- 

 cable fishways established at dams and other obstructions, the 

 natural increases of fishes would render stocking by artificial means 

 unnecessary. This view seems plausible enough were the 

 primitive conditions of the waters preserved and maintained. 

 But such is not the case, and never will be. 



The natural conditions of all waters in the thickly settled 

 portions of our country have been changed. This change has been 

 brought about by various activities and utilities that are the result 

 of the progress of civilization. Among them are the industries 

 of lumbering, mining, manufacturing and agriculture, and the 

 sewage of towns and cities. 



With lumbering it begins with logging. The breeding places 

 of the trouts and grayling are in the tiny streams forming the 

 headwaters of creeks and rivers. In their primitive state they 

 were in the midst of coniferous forests, in whose solitude and shade 

 and banks and borders of these rills and rivulets were clothed with 

 a dense tangle of verdure, consisting of mosses, ferns and semi- 

 aquatic vegetation. The spongy soil was saturated with moisture 

 that not only maintained and replenished the small streams, but 

 was essential to the reproduction of the larvae of myriads of insects, 

 and the minute crustaceans and mollusks that form the first food 

 of the baby fishes. 



* A part of this paper was read at a meeting of the American Fisheries 

 Society a number of years ago, but as the writer was not present, the article 

 was not discussed, and no action was taken by the Society. It is now pre- 

 sented in an amplified form, in the hope that some action may be taken, 

 by resolution or otherwise, whereby the attention of the Federal and State 

 Governments may be invited to a consideration of the matter, and to the 

 necessity for the enactment of such laws that will prevent the lamentable 

 destruction of fish and fish food that now obtains in many states. 



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