American Fisheries Societ 



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last year I received a letter and also specimens of fish from a stream 

 in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania ; and when we made an 

 examination of them they bore the same earmarks that the brown 

 trout and the rainbow trout did that were killed at the Allentown 

 hatchery. I made an investigation and found that there had been a 

 tremendous thunderstorm and that lightning had struck the trees and 

 ground in several places along the shores of that stream — not the 

 stream itself — but it struck on the shore and the fish, as 1 say, bore 

 the same marks as those fish which were killed in the Allentown ponds. 



Professor Dyche : I have been fishing since 1 was a boy, and in 

 four or five instances I have stood on the banks of streams fishing 

 where lightning struck a tree right on the shore of the creek. In one 

 instance a large elm was struck and a strip of bark and splinters was 

 torn out from the top to the bottom of the tree which was actually 

 split in places. I never knew of a fish coming to the surface on 

 account of those heavy strokes of lightning along an ordinary stream. 

 If it is possible to kill such fish as bass, catfish, buffalo, or carp, the 

 lightning must be right close to them. 1 do not know about the trout. 



Mr. Meehan : The fish from northwestern Pennsylvania to which I 

 referred were suckers and catfish almost entirely; although there were 

 said to be two or three bass. They were fish that would be naturally 

 on the bottom of the stream; and this stream is very rocky and stony. 



Dr. Field : I wish to say a word in appreciation of the work of 

 Dr. Forbes and the Illinois Commission in this line. It seems 

 to me that it is the best that has been done in this country. We in the 

 United States do not at all appreciate the importance of this type of 

 economic work. We hear a great deal about the increased cost of 

 living and here we are on the one side throwing out the very material 

 which is most needed on the land, and, more than that, by means of 

 this same material we are destroying the fish in the streams. I have 

 just come from the Conservation Congress at Kansas City where the 

 dominant tone was the conservation of the soil; and yet almost from 

 the very windows of the convention hall yon could see men carting off 

 the manure from the stock-yards and dumping it into the streams ! 

 It is a common practice to dump manure into streams instead of putting 

 it on the land. 



In the northeastern section of the United States conditions are 

 complicated by the fact that the sewage is mingled with a very large 

 amount of manufacturing waste, and is not in so dilute a condition as 

 is that of Chicago; and though the conditions in the Illinois River 

 are bad, they are infinitely worse in the manufacturing communities 

 in the east. Yet our streams are capable of producing as many fish per 

 acre, or as much fish food per litre of water, as are the streams of 

 any section of the country. The Blackstone River in Massachusetts 

 is notoriously the worst polluted river in the world. 



Now our section of the country docs not appreciate the importance 

 of taking up the work, such as Dr. Forbes has done. He has shown 



