American Fisheries Society 111 



the states and the national Government to further steps toward the 

 prevention of the pollution of the waters. 



There is no question at all but what Dr. Townsend's paper this 

 morning and our President's paper also touched upon a subject that 

 the fish culturist and the scientist must keep in mind if they are going 

 to increase the fishes in the waters. I have been hatching fish over 

 forty years, and the question of merely hatching fish today is nothing 

 but a question of machinery. We give Mr. Downing a stated number of 

 whitefish this fall, tell him how many whitefish he will have penned 

 up or ready to take eggs from and Mr. Downing will tell you within 

 5 per cent how many he will return next spring — just as your factory 

 does. But though we can hatch the fish and place them in the water, 

 if the water is polluted all the fish culturists in Christendom cannot 

 make it productive. What is the use of hatching 500,000,000 of white- 

 fish — and it is more than that in both the Dominion of Canada and the 

 United States — what is the use, I say, of hatching those fish and putting 

 them in water that we ourselves (I am owning up today) know is 

 polluted? And how are we to wake the people up to this fact? 



As I have said before in this Society, in Thunder Bay on Lake 

 Huron, a bay that used to be teeming with whitefish, the feeding 

 ground of the whitefish, today you cannot find a whitefish. That is a 

 bay nine miles out from the river and whitefish used to be caught in 

 Thunder Bay River. 



Now we must put a stop to this. The bottom of Thunder Bay today 

 is covered anywhere from one to ten feet deep with refuse. The case 

 is, of course, different outside in the lake, and plants of fish count there. 

 But we cannot get rid of the pollution in Thunder Bay. 



Now it seems to me, as I said, that there ought to be something done. 

 And it also seems to me that if this Society can go on record good and 

 hard, some way so that it is plain we mean it, we might thus help the 

 state and the national Government to take some action. I do not know 

 just how it is going to be done, but it has got to be done or we are 

 never going to take our fish in the lakes. 



Mr. W. E. Meehan, Harrisburg, Pa. : I am very much interested 

 in this paper of Dr. Townsend's, and a few weeks ago when the com- 

 mittee met it was understood that he was to make a speech and T was to 

 follow in respect to the work that has been accomplished in Pennsyl- 

 vania, with regard to the State of Pennsylvania and the interests of the 

 adjoining states. My remarks have been put in the form of a paper, 

 and I am embarrassed in the discussion of Dr. Townsend's paper be- 

 cause anything I may say now will be largely a repetition of what I 

 have said in my paper. There is one fact, however, that I might 

 touch on, and that is the Ohio River, to which Dr. Townsend has 

 referred. 



The pollution there has been so bad that fish have been destroyed 

 by the millions, and about a year ago a conference was held in Pitts- 

 burg between authorities of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, 

 and the United States Bureau of Fisheries. The result was that a 

 resolution was adopted recommending that the States of Ohio and 



