10 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONERS 



fishermen, and after running the gauntlet of the traps and leaving a 

 goodly portion of their numbers there, the splendid fish are farther 

 and perhaps more fatally decimated by the hook and liners, who swarm 

 at every rock and mussel bed in the bay where the fish are known to 

 congregrate. The time will come, we feel sure, let us hope in our own 

 day when all this will be stopped, and a close time established for bay 

 fishes as well as those of inland waters and a chance afforded them to 

 carry out the law of reproduction as nature intended they should. 

 Not until then will they swarm in our bay as of yore. Nature, 

 we may be sure will provide against over production, and man may 

 help himself in a legitimate manner and no harm be done. "The 

 fishes in the sea can never be exhausted," applies only to those who 

 stay and reproduce in the sea; those that are obliged to come into 

 shoal water to spawn must have some mercy shown them, or our 

 children's children (if we are so fortunate as to have any) will have no 

 fish, and may with good reason dispute the theory of the late lamented 

 Agassiz, at least as applied to their forefathers, "that a fish diet pro- 

 duces brains." 



The length of time required to hatch the spawn of scup and tautog 

 after it leaves the parent fish has never been ascertained, but probably 

 not more than from two to four weeks and perhaps much less. It is 

 an interesting question and will no doubt be soon settled, through 

 the thorough and complete investigations made each year by Prof. 

 Baird, the United States Commissioner. 



It has been proposed by some of those most violently opposed to the 

 trappers, that a summary stop shall be put to the business, probably not 

 reflecting on the injustice of such a course, and the loss it would entail 

 upon the men who have their money invested in trapping gear, and 

 who have pursued the business with more or less profit for twenty years 

 and upwards, not to speak of the possible unconstitutionality of such 

 a course. We are, all of us, legislators, commissioners, fishermen, and 

 arguers, pro. and con. unfortunately very ignorant of what goes on 

 under water, it is an element that offers many difficulties to the stu- 

 dent and we must then submit to learn what we do of nature's work 

 slowly if we would learn surely, and avoid jumping at conclusions. 



