22 TWENTY-EIGHTH AMXUAL MEETING 



culture will have been unanimously accepted, and will have 

 reached a degree of perfection beyond our wildest dreams. 

 And, although, a vast amount of good lias been accomplished 

 in behalf of the fisheries by the protection and assistance fur- 

 nished by our different Fish Commissions, the hearty co-opera- 

 tion of law with fish cultural work is absolutely necessary to 

 complete and perfect the science and art of fish culture. The 

 word "protection" is often a misnomer, and on account 

 of the euphony it carries, and the nutritive and beneficent 

 qualities which it naturally suggests, many laws or methods 

 under this head are passed, relating to our fisheries, and 

 are frequently more oppressive than protective. If laws 

 are so stringent as to prevent fishing for any great length of 

 time during the year, this kind of legislation simply keeps the 

 fish from our nets, our markets, and our tables, and is not pro- 

 tection at all. The object of true protection is to increase and 

 naaintain the supply to such an extent that very few laws will 

 be necessary to assist nature and protected propagation to 

 establish an equilibrium, without prohibiting the capture of 

 mature specimens for human use, and thus obviate the im- 

 position of many hardships, and the infringement upon the 

 rights of those whose destined vocation it is to fish for a liveli- 

 hood, by the retention of valuable food products in the waters, 

 thus, under the shield of the law depriving the people of food 

 which our Creator has so abundantly provided, and which with 

 proper care and husbandry will, in all probability, supply any 

 future demand. 



Instead of maintaining the fertilitj^ of our soil only to its 

 present productive power, there will come a time when condi- 

 tions will necessitate that one acre of land must yield ten 

 times, or twenty times, (as the case may be) as much as it does 

 now. Imagine how inadequate would have been the crude 

 facilities of olden times to meet the requirements of our pres- 

 ent population! There must be a corresponding improvement 

 upon the methods now employed, with the future increase of 

 population, or their demands can never be supplied. If our 

 population doubles every thirty-three years in the future, as it 

 has in the past, the time is fast approaching when this coun- 

 try will become very densely inhabited, and the same is true of 

 the rest of the earth. At this rate of increase, in only 1.S2 

 years from now, we shall number, in round numbers, 1.200 

 iaiillion souls — and this is not far in the future — less than four 

 generations of only one-third of a century each, when the 

 population of this United States will be equal to about three- 

 fourths of the present inhabitants of the globe. Pause for a 

 moment and think how insufficient would prove our present 

 stock of fish life to supply the needs of such a population! 



