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injure the fish. Sometimes, also, a man from hurrying or 

 carelessness, would grab a fish across the back, leaving 

 finger marks upon it, and in a few days after, they in- 

 variably found three or four stripes of fungoid growth 

 appearing, and the fish invariably died. He, there- 

 fore, came to the conclusion that this fungoid growth 

 was the result of infinitessimal spores coming down 

 the stream, which produced this growth on the bruised 

 portions of the fish, and the fish could not shake it 

 off because they were generally in a prostrate and 

 lean condition after spawning. This disease did not pre- 

 vail generally in the United States, or in any other country 

 in its natural state. Nearly all the rivers and streams, 

 when the country was first inhabited, were pure and limpid, 

 the waters were cold, and these immense numbers of spores 

 did not float down the rivers ; but as countries became 

 cleared, and the volume of water reduced by absorption 

 and evaporation, and by the superheating of the water by 

 the sun's rays, more of these spores were produced, and 

 when the fish were injured, as they now were by fishermen 

 catching them, and by passing through nets, and in getting 

 injured as they came up into the rivers, they were more 

 liable to be attacked, and so the disease was produced. 

 He believed there was no possibility of overcoming it until 

 they could somehow change the waters up which the fish 

 migrated. Another mode would be by improving the pro- 

 tection of those fish which could escape up the river. He 

 might dilate on this subject, and would assure the Con- 

 ference that unless some greater efforts were made to pro- 

 tect the fish in every possible way, they must expect them 

 to be decimated in the end. He believed the practical 

 remedy was to preserve fish by judicious laws, and prevent 

 men destroying them, and also to prevent the polluted 

 matter being allowed to flow into the stream. 



