128 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES. 



their discoveries. A great many fishing vessels carry collecting tanks. In this 

 manner some 60,000 specimens have been obtained and over thirty species of fishes 

 have been added to the known fauna of North America. 



All these facts and many more were contributed by Prof. R. Edward Earll to 

 the data which Prof. G. B. Goode submitted in his address before the International 

 Fisheries Conference at London, in 1883, and which have recently been printed. 

 They show not only the tremendous scope of the work in hand, but the large discre- 

 tionary power which the commissioner enjoys as one of the pet factors of the 

 government. One of its duties is to suggest to Congress any protective, precau- 

 tionary or prohibitory measures necessary for the rehabilitation of the waters of 

 the United States. It has been so instructed. Now the commission has promised 

 the people an abundance of fish, so that all may eat and be filled. It has promised 

 them fish without legislation ; and while it does not affect to despise state legislative 

 enactments as indirect aids to protection and propagation, it forbears to introduce 

 the law into the hatching box. It declares, in effect, that hereafter fish shall be so 

 plentiful that protective laws will be superfluous and that anglers shall enjoy the 

 privilege of fishing without paying for it. Such a consummation will remove all 

 disputes about riparian rights and take the gilt edge off from the eclat which at- 

 taches to club membership. In the halcyon days of that coming anglers' millennium 

 trespass notices will not be any more required for private trout waters than they 

 are for hen-roosts. The occupation of the big bulldog will perish, and the last 

 exacerbated trousers-seat will be hung up in the National Museum as a memento 

 of the dampness which once hung around a fisherman's luck. 



NOTE. The foregoing chapter was written in May, 1885. EDITOR. 



