American Fisheries Society. ■ 49 



convulsion he should be wiped out of existence, and in aeons of 

 ages to come, some creature endowed as he is, should come upon 

 the stage of action, he would still find evidences of his power as a 

 builder. 



But in the realm of the Organic! What of him there? A 

 builder? No, only a destroyer! Douni through the whole 

 march of the ages, his record has been that of the most terrible 

 beast on the face of the earth. His "Slogan" was ever : Kill ! 

 Kill ! Kill ! and every created thing from his own species to the 

 worm under his foot has been the victim of his rapacity. Those 

 beasts that he could not tame and make subservient to his need, 

 he exterminated. Every beast of the field has learned to fear 

 him. The birds of the air have learned to hasten and prolong 

 their flight beyond his deadly presence. And in the waters that 

 pulsated at his feet ! What of him there ? What is his record 

 as a controlling factor in the life that swims on tlie surface or 

 throngs in countless millions beneath? As we listen to the 

 echoes coming up to us from the dawn of recorded history, and 

 throbbing in the ears of the present, comes the eternal cry. Kill 1 

 Kill ! Kill ! From the huge Cetacean whose enormous build and 

 terrible strength rivaled the Leviathan of the innovation of Job, 

 down to the delicate anchovy whose brightness like a silver 

 arrow gleames in the ocean's pelucid waters. In every tumbling 

 brook, in every gliding river, in all the inland lakes shining like 

 gems in their emerald settings; in and among all these he has 

 been "eternally at it" killing and destroying, primarily to satisfy 

 his hunger and his love of gain: and secondly to satisfy that 

 innate love of killing that we euphemistically designate as 

 "Sport." For no matter how much we weave around it the 

 magic of poetry and charm of seductive language, yet all the 

 way from St. Izaak down to that supreme juggler with apt 

 words, Henry Van Dyke the "gentle art" is to kill as many of 

 the fish that inhabit the waters as may satisfy this madness of 

 destruction that riots in the blood of us all. 



JSTo one realizes better than myself, that there is another side 

 to this question. There has never been a picture painted in 

 words or on canvass of the beauties of companionship with na- 

 ture, that has not been painted in my soul a hundred times. I 

 know the sweet joy of the vagabond life of the camp : the uplift 



