WHAT WE CAN DO TO PROMOTE FISH 

 CONSERVATION 



By Charles Minor Blackford, M. D., 

 Staunton, Virginia. 



Perhaps no country in the world possesses more 

 societies and associations for the promotion of various 

 ends than does the United States, and yet the small suc- 

 cess that attends the labors of these organizations must 

 attract the notice of anyone who looks into the matter. 

 In every state, in many counties and in every city or 

 large town, we find medical societies and other scientific 

 or semi-scientific bodies that are trying to teach the 

 people at large how to better their physical condition, 

 and yet in many cases, their influence is negligible. It 

 was only after the brilliant object lessons given by the 

 altered hygienic conditions in Havana and on the Canal 

 Zone, that the mass of our intelligent people became con- 

 vinced that the mosquito is anything more than a trivial 

 nuisance and that the house fly is a menace to life, al- 

 though the medical societies had been preaching these 

 facts to unheeding ears for several years. When the 

 truth was brought home to the people, however, they 

 grasped the situation, and the tables of mortality already 

 show the results of the campaign now being waged 

 against these domestic enemies. 



The reason why these bodies of learned and experi- 

 enced men have so small an influence on the people 

 around them may be summed up in the single word, 

 ignorance. This popular ignorance and its twin off- 

 spring, prejudice and vanity, must be overcome be- 

 fore any marked results can be effected. Mere legisla- 

 tion will not accomplish much. Along our special line, 

 the conservation of fishes, there is ample legislation — 

 indeed in some instances there is too much — but the 

 legislation is not accomplishing its end and we should 

 try to find out why it is not doing so. Many of the laws 



