. Iiiicrican I'lslicrics Society. 55 



the kind of protection that protects. L>y postponing their cap- 

 ture for a few days, until the spawning grounds were reached, 

 the want(»n waste of an untold number of germs might l)c pre- 



\e|_itc'(l and. thr()u,L;li tlic magic toucii nf man. be called into life. 



The saving- of adults that is claimed for the closed spawning 

 season is more apparent than real, for a season closed at any 

 time, whether by law or the weather, merely postpones their 

 capture. There is no real gain or increase of adults — their num- 

 bers are not added to. Thus, the adults that are shielded in 

 November are for the most part caught before the following 

 November. They are protected from capture for the time being, 

 but in so doing we lose the enormous difference in hatching re- 

 sults between natural and protected methods. 



A reckless disregard of the principles herein set forth has 

 brought some of the Great Lake fisheries to a point where it 

 may become necessary, for a time, to reap our annual crop of 

 wliitefish and lake trout as the farmer does liis grain, namely, 

 when the seed is ripe. Thus, if we would open our present 

 closed season and close our present open season, the production 

 of the young, through the agency of protected propagation, 

 would be so greatly increased that but few seasons of this kind 

 of sowing and reaping would be required to ijicrease the annual 

 crop to the highest productive limit. Until this limit was 

 reached the more we would thus reap, the more we could sow, 

 and the more we would thus sow, the more we should reap. 

 With fish as with grain, it is just as essential to reap at the right 

 time in order to be able to sow as to sow at the right time in 

 order to reap. 



In the vegetable world we endeavor to destroy or extermin- 

 ate what is obnoxious by attacking it while it is yet green, but 

 what we would save for reproduction we protect until it is ripe. 

 Thus, the farmer cuts hi? grain when ripe and his weeds and 

 thistles when green. During most of the year our connnercial 

 fish are treated as weeds and thistles, killed ofif without limit 

 while their seed is green. And then, when the seed is ripe, 

 instead of treating tjiem as grain, the closed season law caps 

 the climax of economic blindness and folly by saying, hands ofT. 

 these fields of waving gold, nodding and beckoning for the 

 sickle, must remain untouched ; the seed must return to mother 

 earth undefiled, the contaminatiiig touch of the hand of man 

 must not supervene, for then the sacred function of reproduction 

 would not be strictly natural ! 



Under the circumstances, so drastic a measure as closing 



