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of its decadence, and what is necessary to be done for its 

 restoration and permanent maintenance. Is it worth the 

 expenditure? I think I can answer without hesitation for 

 Michigan waters. I had occasion in 1886 to examine the his- 

 tory of Michigan fisheries, and was led to the conclusion, after 

 careful examinations and comparisons of such statistics as are 

 obtainable, that if our waters had been as productive In 1885 

 as they were in 1859, with the effectiveness of apparatus and 

 extent of operations in the former year, the money value of 

 the products of Michigan waters in 1885 would have been not 

 less than fifteen millions of dollars, instead of about one and 

 one-half millions. In 1887 I compared the product of the 

 Michigan fisheries for the year 1885 with those of the Province 

 of Ontario, and found that the money value of the former, if 

 computed upon the same basis as that employed by the Cana- 

 dian Department of Marine and Fisheries, exceeded that of the 

 province by more than one hundred thousand dollars. 



The States bordering the Great Lakes having an immediate 

 interest to be subserved by such an examination, as the work 

 is being prosecuted in their waters, should co-operate by fur- 

 nishing a crew of three or four men to assist in gathering 

 statistics and other information, which would be of great value 

 to the State Fish Commissions in illustrating to the Legisla- 

 tures the kinds of regulations required to restrain wasteful fish- 

 ing, which has gone so far towards depleting the waters, as 

 well as the kind and extent of operations to restore produc- 

 tiveness of the waters. They might also direct or assist in the 

 fishing operations of the expedition. Such an examination 

 would also demonstrate the exact extent to which artificial 

 propagation of whitefish benefited the fisheries, and indicate 

 what points along the lakes required attention in order to the 

 more even distribution of future supplies. The information so 

 gathered would help, by furnishing the required data, towards 

 another and most important feature in the regulation of the 

 fisheries of the Great Lakes, namely, the licensing of fishing 

 as an industry. In alluding thus briefly to this subject there 

 is not time to more than call attention to the fact that a fair 

 system of licensing would in time defray all or the larger part 



