90 American Fisheries Society 



tion with a minimum amount of expense or hardship to the 

 commercial fishery interests, and as before stated it is a 

 source of regret for it seems to be the weak point in the 

 armor of protection that has been thrown around this species 

 through the efforts of the Society, its members and friends. 

 This weakness in our armor has been discovered by the fish- 

 ery interests, who prefer temporary advantage rather than 

 permanent profits and successful efforts have already been 

 made to break clown former legislation which gave a fair 

 degree of protection. Up to 1912, every state and province 

 interested in the Great Lakes, save Pennsylvania, gave a 

 minimum size limit of protection to the whitefish. Ohio's 

 law is one and three-fourths pound in the round; Minne- 

 sota's, two and one-half pounds in the round, while the 

 other states' and the Dominion's regulation is two pounds. 

 This latter weight of a minimum size of two pounds has 

 the endorsement of the heads of fisheries departments of 

 both the United States and the Dominion of Canada, has 

 the recommendation of the International Commission and 

 was embodied in the treaty on international control of con- 

 tiguous waters of the United States and Canada. When we 

 of the states bordering upon the Great Lakes consider that, 

 for twenty or more years, the United States Bureau of Fish- 

 eries has planted annually in those waters upwards of 

 200,000,000 of whitefish fry, the question is asked why 

 these states should not legislate in harmony with the wishes 

 of the Bureau of Fisheries, which are, as expressed by the 

 Commissioner, that a uniform law of two pounds in the 

 round for whitefish would be beneficial. Let us go back a 

 moment to Pennsylvania. Notwithstanding that state has 

 been accorded for years the privilege of taking and has taken 

 millions of whitefish eggs from Canadian waters, and has 

 received annually from the United States Bureau more 

 whitefish eggs than any other state, some years more than 

 all other states combined, one looks in vain in the Pennsyl- 

 vania digest of fishery laws for even the word "whitefish," 



