14 REPORT OF ONTARIO GAME Xo. 52 



It was not to be expected that conditions should be precisely similar 

 throug-hout the vast extent of the Great Lake fisheries, nor that all the 

 authorities concerned in their control should see eye to eye in the matter 

 of adopting the best possible means to suit their individual necessities, 

 for it must be remembered that from the beginning political considera- 

 tions have played no insignificant role in determining these matters on 

 both sides of the boundary. Consequently, each authority having selected 

 the remedies that seemed best in its judgment, there arose a situation of 

 much complexity, in which the various regulations prevailing in adjacent 

 waters not only served to increase the difficulties of efficient administra- 

 tion and enforcement of these various laws, but also rendered it almost 

 impossible to test accuratel}^ the efficacy of this or that measure, for while 

 regulations can obviously be localized to imaginary boundary lines, it 

 is but rarely that in practice the fishery areas will be found to conform 

 to the same, and to discover the real merits of a fishery enactment it is 

 plainly necessary to have it in force throughout the whole of the par- 

 ticular fishing area affected. Moreover, each authority could, under this 

 variegated system, attribute the continued decrease in its fisheries to the 

 foolishness of its neighbors' regulations, a situation which, while it may 

 be of temporary political convenience, plainly harbors a terrible economic 

 folly from the viewpoint of a perpetuation of the fisheries and the welfare 

 of the people concerned. For many years this fact has been recognized 

 by experts on both sides of the boundary, with the result that a Joint 

 Commission was appointed by the two Federal Governments concerned, 

 and there has at length been drawn up a code of regulations which are 

 to apply equally to all international water-s of the Great Lake system. 

 The date for the promulgation of this international code of regulations 

 has not yet been fixed, but it would appear that it cannot now be much 

 longer delayed, and in view of the fact that, once promulgated, it will 

 remain in force for at least a term of five years, and that it deals de- 

 cisively with the methods of capture and meshes of nets, it obviously be- 

 comes unnecessary for your Commissioner to discuss either of these 

 questions. The code, however, deals with the limitation of nets only to 

 the extent of defining the proximity of pound nets to each other, of series 

 of pound nets to each other, and numbers in a series, and does not deal 

 at all with the question of close seasons, and only generally with that of 

 artificial propagation, and, since it is clearly stated in the opening para- 

 graph of the code that domestic legislation is not affected otherwise than 

 to the extent of the provisions of the code, it would seem reasonable to 

 suppose that all these matters are left to the judgment of the authori- 

 ties concerned. Consequently it would appear necessary to touch on 

 each of these matters separately. 



The Limitation of Nets. 



That in virgin waters teeming with fish there exists an indissoluble 

 relation between the amount of net used and the amount of fish caught 



