54 Thirtieth Annual Meeting 



boi's, wlio after liaving oaten the "fatted calf" cannot find even 

 the 'iiiisks to fill np on" and so succumb to the inevitable. T 

 have known lakes in which there was fine bass fishing to become 

 completely depopulated in three years by a foot or two's lower- 

 ing of the original water line. 



To my mind, it is not at all impossible that some disturbing 

 or destructive influence of the flora of our great lakes has more 

 to do witli the depletion of its whitefish than the greed of fisher- 

 men. I remember very distinctly the surprise that I experienced 

 when 1 first discovered the food of the whitefish. It was soon 

 after my a])pointment on the l)oard of the state fish commis- 

 sioners. I could find lio one among authors or practical fisher- 

 men who could give me any information as to what they ate. So 

 I made a trip to Grand Haven, at that time having a large in- 

 terest in the catching of fish. One of the fishermen turned over 

 to me possibly a barrel of intestines, and I started out with a 

 shar]) knife, a stout stomach and lots of ignorance to find out 

 what whitefish lived on. I worked diligently for an hour cut- 

 ting open stomach after stomach but without any result in find- 

 ing what I was looking for. In nearly every one I found more 

 or less sand mixed with the mucus of the stomach. I finally 

 came to the conclusion that as the fisli had been caught in gill 

 nets their detention there had emptied the stomach of all food. 

 Just as T was a1)out to give up for that time 1 thought I would 

 see how the inside of the stomach looked under a magnifying 

 glass I had in my jacket. Incidentally I looked at some of the 

 sand, when to my intense amazement I discovered that what T 

 had regarded as sand was the shells of a minute bivalve but little 

 larger than a grain of sand and so translucent as to shine as a 

 grain of sand. Of course this was a new world and I commenced 

 all over again, and left with a very thorough knowledge of what 

 those white fish had been feeding on, for there were the shells in 

 all stages of digestion from those recently taken in, to the shell 

 from wliich the animal had been removed by the digestive pro- 

 cess. Still what I found seemed so insignificant to the size of 

 the fish that I thought there might be some mistake so I con- 

 cluded io Tcnuiiu over night and verify my observation l)y the 

 next day's catch. 1 did so with the same results. Then I 

 thouijht it miiiht l)e a local matter, and so a few months after I 



