130 Tiventy-seventh Annual Meeting 



Mr. Clark: I don't wish to take up the time with any argu- 

 ment, but Prof. Ward's paper is right in the hne of what I had 

 been advocating for ten years on the subject of the work of the 

 scientists in this direction on the Great Lakes; that it should be 

 continued from month to month during the year. I have argued 

 that the summer campaign of these men has never developed or 

 brought out what practical fish culturists want to know in regard 

 to the habits of the fish in the great lakes. I think that the 

 scientists are taking a step in the right direction. The scientists 

 and th^ fish culturists and everybody should keep together. 



Prof. Birge: I think the paper puts the rule for the condi- 

 tions of success, extremely well. I don't believe in a summer 

 campaign. With all due respect to the college professors, I don't 

 think they can do that work permanently. I think the work must 

 ultimately be conducted by men who make it their life work, just 

 exactly as with the agricultural experiment stations. We find in 

 Wisconsin that the men who work in the stations do very little 

 teaching. They hold the rank of professor, but they are expected 

 to do little or no teaching. It is found that a man cannot give 

 his time to the problem of agricultural conditions and at the 

 same time do a large amount of teaching. If the man is going 

 to reach real success in handling these practical problems, he 

 must set up with them day and night, week after week and year 

 after year. What ought to be done is for the United States Fish 

 Commission to establish at least one such station and maintain 

 it, as Prof. Ward says, without any expectation of inmiediate re- 

 sults of a practical kind, and put men in there to study the prob- 

 lems and find out how they can be established. Such a station 

 would utilize the work of the college professor in the summer, 

 and it would be made available; at the same time the work should 

 be carried on by the regular employes of such station. I don't 

 think that anybody can doubt that such a station must be estab- 

 lished. When you try to throw even the small amount of work 

 that v.'e have done on a few, you will find at once the dense ig- 

 norance you have, you will find nobody knows anything about it; 

 there are a lot of disconnected observations and knowledge that 

 you can pick up, but when you try to get things together in 

 some shape, nobody knows anything about it and nobody will 

 know anything about it until an enormous amount of work has 

 been done on a great number of different classes of subjects and 

 the whole thing has been brought together by a continuance of 

 the work extending over a good many years and when you once 

 get that you can get practical results: such work as Forbes is at 



