68 Fortieth Annual Meeting 



My father and Mr. Roosevelt were very warm friends, both equally 

 fond of fishing and field sports. Their practical experience and knowl- 

 edge of matters pertaining to the disappearance of game and the decline 

 of the fisheries, rendered them an ideal team in the inception and execu- 

 tion of the work of the New York Fishery Commission, of which they 

 were both charter members in connection with Hon. Horatio Seymour. 



Mr. Livingston Stone was so actively identified with the organization 

 of this Society that I am sure a brief extract from his paper read before 

 the National Fisheries Congress held at Tampa, Ma., in 1898, will be 

 of interest, as it so beautifully expresses the conditions and feelings 

 of the early experimenters : 



"In looking back over those early years and contrasting them with 

 the present, when such an immense mass of information is available, 

 one is forcibly struck by the almost universal ignorance on the subject 

 that prevailed at that time. This was true not only of people generally, 

 but of well informed men also, for even scientists who rightly deserved 

 the name, and university graduates and accomplished scholars who 

 prided themselves on the variety of their knowledge, and reading men 

 who kept up with the magazines and newspapers, could tell you nothing 

 of this art of fish culture. Yet this was not so very surprising, for 

 books had not then been published in this country on the subject, 

 magazine articles about it had not appeared, encyclopedias did not 

 contain the information, or at most only the merest outlines of it, and 

 there was no avenue open to the public by which more than a super- 

 ficial knowledge of the subject could be reached. People generally were 

 so utterly ignorant indeed of the whole subject that almost any story 

 about fish eggs would pass unchallenged. How different the present 

 day, when the minute fish life of the very bottom of the ocean is 

 closely and thoroughly studied, and the fish food furnished by the 

 microscopic life of fresh-water lakes is measured and classified. 



"To go back in memory to those early days is not only to lend the 

 enchantment that distance brings, but it is also to return to what was 

 real enchantment then. It seems as if we should never feel again — I 

 know I am expressing the feelings of all the early experimenters in 

 hatching fish — it seems as if we should never feel again, and we shall 

 probably never feel again the thrill of excitement that tingled to our 

 Imgers' ends when we first saw the little black speck in the unhatched 

 embryo, which told us that the egg was alive. It was one of the dearest 

 sights on earth to us then. And when the first little trout emerged from 

 its shell and wriggled in the water, wiiy were we so excited and elated? 

 Was it because the little fish opened up to us a new world of promise, 

 and because we had a dim vision of the countless multitudes of living 

 creatures that this little embryo was the significant forerunner of? 

 Was it because we unconsciously felt we were sharing with others in a 

 great discovery? I suppose it was something of the sort, and now after 

 those long years have passed and we coldly watch under a microscope, 

 with half scientific interest, the development of this little black speck, 



