FISHERMEN AND FISHERIES. 217 



between Canada, Great Britain, and the United States on Evidence of 

 the subject of the Fishery Clauses of the Treaty of Wash- fishery 



statistics. 



ington, when it was essential that good evidence of the 

 money value of the fisheries in Canadian waters, as com- 

 pared with those in American waters, should be forth- 

 coming, the statistics collected by the Commissioner of 

 Fisheries in Canada proved of the greatest assistance to 

 the representatives of the Powers concerned. " One special 

 point to be determined," says Professor S. F. Baird, the 

 United States Fishery Commissioner, in his report for 1877, 

 " was the value of the inshore sea fisheries of the United 

 States from the Bay of Fundy to Delaware Bay. The 

 absence of any system on our part for collecting facts on 

 this subject was never more fully appreciated then when it 

 was needed to protect the United States against an unjust 

 award. . . . The American side laboured under a serious 

 disadvantage for want of methodical and regular statistics 

 of the fisheries of the United States. The case was quite 

 different, however, with the other party. The authorities of 

 Canada had for many years kept and published annually 

 an extremely exhaustive account of everything taken in 

 their fisheries, giving the number of each kind taken and 

 preserved in each province, county, and district, as also the 

 exportations to foreign countries, including the United 

 States. It is greatly to be hoped," continues the American 

 Commissioner, " that, whether with reference to future con- 

 ventions of this kind or not, the necessary steps will be 

 taken by the United States to secure data corresponding to 

 those taken regularly and systematically in Canada." By 

 the substitution of " the United Kingdom " for " the United 

 States," these words may be echoed on this side of the 

 Atlantic. Even if our statistics should never be required as 

 evidence in matters of la haute politique, they would have 



