American Fisheries Society 217 



ing typical invertebrate animal associations, in which the 

 ideas above expressed are graphically set forth for the bene- 

 fit of the public. 



DISCUSSION 



Dr. B. M. Briggs, Brooklyn, N. Y. : As I have attended these meet- 

 ings, it has come home to me that we should commence with the children 

 and instruct them. We all know that forces are equal and opposite, 

 and unless we get heads to absorb these problems we will not be able to 

 get at them, and we ought to start with children in the schools and teach 

 them all the way up. This admirable paper has told us about the adapt- 

 ability that may be learned in the waters. 1 think that is taught more in 

 the waters than on the land; that the waters are more full of life and 

 the life therein teaches us how to carry our lives; and if this Society 

 could make an effort to teach the children in schools and colleges along 

 this line, it would be well. We have seen how forestry has been taught 

 in late years and the good it has done. Now we have hardly scratched 

 the ground in this department. 



Only a couple of years ago, I think, people that ought to know 

 better took two or three cans of cod fry to Jamaica Bay, cut a hole in 

 the ice, and dumped them in. They came to naught. It was like 

 dumping a lot of corn on a rock, and saying we planted so much corn 

 in the field. It goes in the statistics but nowhere else. And so if those 

 who are supposed to know know very little, how are others going to 

 know, and how is the problem of the food supply going to come to 

 fruition? We should today start something here on that line. 



Prof. R. C. Osburn, New York : Something of this kind is being 

 done in New York City. The Aquarium supplies some 350 of the 

 public schools with balanced aquaria, such as you see about the room 

 here, for the study of some of these things in a simple way, namely, of 

 the balance of animal and plant life in a small aquarium, and what 

 forms will get along peaceably with other forms, and incidentally 

 what forms prey upon one another. That is a simple thing and 

 merely a beginning; but it shows that the question is being taken up — 

 at least, a beginning is being made by the New York schools in this 

 matter. 



