40 TWENTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING 



and the temptation that there was to the fishermen, in view 

 of the fact that a time was coming when they wanted to try 

 to repeal the law, to change those fignres and make them 

 larger than they ought to be. 



Mr. Clark: The fignres go back to 1895, 1896 and 1897. 



Mr. Whitaker: I do not know about 1896, of course. 



Mr. Clark : I wanted to make known where I got my figures, 

 so that it shows that they are on the increase. The figures 

 show that the fish are on the increase, if those statistical fig- 

 ures are good for anything, and I suppose they are. They 

 ought to be as good as any data. 



Mr. Whitaker: They are as good as we are able to get. 



Mr. Clark: They are as good as we can get. Now Mr 

 President and gentlemen, the idea I have has nothing to do 

 with the fishing. It is not my aim to protect the fishermen 

 there. I simply want more fish in the waters. The fish cul- 

 turists of the United States have accomplished one thing, and 

 that is that they can hatch fish by the billions. We have gone 

 by that. That is all fixed; and we must now do something 

 more. We shall have to grow those fish. And why do we 

 not do it? I take the ground that the class of fish that do not 

 take care of their eggs are a class we should hatch, because 

 there is such a waste. I can show you by an article I have 

 bere, delivered before the Legislature, concerning whitefish 

 penned by Mr. Stranahan at Monroe, that we actually did get 

 about ninety million eggs, and I figured out that we hatched 

 at least sixty per cent, or about sixty million, and there is not 

 a fish culturist in the country that I have ever found who does 

 not say that I am too high when I allow one and one-half 

 million if they were spawned naturally. We put sixty mil- 

 lion in the water against one and one-half million by the nat- 

 ural process. Whitefish do not take care of their eggs. They 

 spawn indiscriminately in the water. The female will throw 

 her eggs when there is not a male anywhere near her. That 

 is the idea. Black bass do not do anything of the kind. They 

 can beat the artificial method. We can not begin to come up 

 to them in artificial work. So this is the ground I take— that 

 the kinds of fish that are free spawners and spawn indiscrimi- 

 nately, such as the whitefish, should be taken care of by the 

 protective methods. That was the idea of my paper, but my 

 article was broad and T did not intend to touch on any partic- 

 ular section or kind of fish. The question was upon the sub- 

 ject of protection in all its phases, and what I really wish the 

 Society would do next year is to bring in their different ideas 

 of protective methods for difi'erent fish. This idea of a closed 

 season — why, we want the fish. That is what they are there 

 in the water for. Another thing, if you take those large fish 



