(18 



18 THE INTERIOR OF THE STATE ENTITLED TO THE RESULTS OF 

 THIS WORK ? 



In answer to this it may be emphatically said that without our 

 streams are opened to their sources, and all obstructions to the 

 passage and destruction of fish removed, they cannot receive, 

 except in an indirect way any benefit from what we are doing. 

 To those who occupy the large fisheries in the sounds and lower 

 rivers and reap the "Harvest of the Sea" by hundreds of thous- 

 ands, this question is of greater importance. The decrease, now so 

 alarmingly apparant is due, more to the obstructions above than 

 to any other cause. Shad and sturgeon formerly ascended the 

 Oatawba and Yadkin almost to their head waters. Nature di- 

 rected them to the pure clear water, where on gravelly bottoms 

 the eggs would successfully hatch and escape the myriads of" 

 enemies below. By ina','s agency they have been cut off and the 

 result is sadly felt. A general law requiring all owners of dams 

 to build a sluice-way over each, niter a pattern prescribed by 

 your board is our only hope. Such a m vlel as you suggest can 

 be made to answer the offices of its design. Existing laws regu- 

 lating the construction of fish ways cannot be carried into exe~ 

 cution, and equity preserved. It should be the duty of one in- 

 dividual to supervise the construction of each way, that experience 

 in the derails may conduce to economy in their construction and 

 that the water powers may suffer no injurv. In an act re- 

 quiring the above, there should be also the requirement that 

 these ways should be kept open from February 1st to June 1st, 

 and at all other times when water is sufficient to allow it, I 

 would respectfully call your attention to the fisfy way recently 

 invented by Col. M. McDonald Fish Commissioner of Vir- 

 ginia. It is an unquestionable success, and this, many have 

 sought after and utterly failed in. As fish naturally go down 

 stream into deeper waters as winter approaches, the constant and 

 never-ceasing tendency is to leave above each succeeding year 

 the puny offspring of fast-growing inferior ancestry. 



The dams stand as barriers and destroyers and if the remedy 

 is not applied our annual supply will necessarily be on thfr 



