58 Thirtieth Annual Meeting 



^Ir. ("lark: We did not have a thousand wliitefish l)y the 

 IStli of Xovember, and all of the balance were canght within 

 about three weeks after that. The year before, we had ten thou- 

 sand up to the loth, showing conclusively that it was the weather 

 that kept them from coming up. Mr. Downing had about the 

 same experience in the upper end of Lake Erie. 



I do not want to let the statement go unchallenged that the 

 whitefish in the Great Lakes are not on the increase, and I mean 

 Lake Erie more particularly, because so many whitefish have 

 been planted there. Now if we will plant in Lake Michigan, 

 Lake Huron, Lake Superior and Lake Ontario, as extensively as 

 we have in Lake Erie, we certainly shall see tlie whitefish in- 

 crease greatly. 



The food question today has a great deal to do with the sul)- 

 ject. I never expect to see the Great Ijakes, even with Inllions 

 upon billions of fish planted each year, back where they were, 

 because, since civilization has stepped in, we have so miich dele- 

 terious matter running into them destroying not only the spawn- 

 ing beds but the feeding grounds. The problem may become a 

 serious one, unless science can show us some way of increasing 

 the food of the whitefish; but the fact that we can increase the 

 whitefish is undeniable, for we are doing it right along. 



Prof. M. C. Marsh, Washington, D. C. : Dr. Parker refers to 

 the difficulty that there would be in getting an agreetnent over 

 on Lake Ontario between the states and Canada in regard to this 

 matter. Inasmuch as it is often difficult to obtain legislation 

 from a single state, we may well imagine that it might be very 

 difficult to obtain an agreement between several states and 

 Canada. A very imjjortant planting investigation almost ex- 

 actly in the line that Dr. Parker has-suggested has been going on 

 in regard to aquatic conditions in Lake Erie, and a similar inves- 

 tigation has been made also in relation to salt water fish. 



Mr. Townsend : I do not know whether the members of the 

 Fisheries Society are familiar with the more or less regular sta- 

 tistical canvasses that are made of the fisheries of the different 

 parts of the country. But it takes a good while with the small 

 statistical force of the United States Fish Commission to get 

 over the ground. They canvass the Southern Atlantic and Gulf 

 states in one season, the ^fiddle Atlantic and New England in 



