THE FISHES 



" Moses, the friend of God Lev. xi. 9, Deut. xiv. 9, 

 appointed fish to be the chief diet for the best commonwealth 

 that ever yet was. The mightiest feasts have been of fish." 



WALTON. 



HERE are lots of fishes and plenty of 

 good fishing in American waters, notwith- 

 standing the ever-increasing army of anglers 

 and professional fishermen, the wanton 

 destruction of the various species for food, 

 sport and false glory, and the spoilation of 

 the very habitat of the finny tribes by the 

 march of so-called civilization. 



There is no hope of saving the fishes 

 forever so long as the prevailing idea of 

 "improvement" obtains, but there is much 

 that the honest angler and nature-lover can do to 

 prolong the life of lovely natural effects and promote the 

 innocent pleasures derived from close communion with 

 the waters and the trees and the beautiful living things 

 that inhabit these. 



The most important movement in the direction of 

 restoring the thousands of ruined waters and preserving 

 the few pure places the greedyman has not as yet "im- 

 proved," is that which will apprehend the spoilers who 

 use the rivers, lakes and bays as the dumping place of 

 their deadly poisonous refuse oil, acid, dye, paint, 

 discharges of the hospital, water-closet, swillpail, and 

 slaughter-house, all of which are cast into the streams, "the 

 element upon which the spirit of God did first move," 

 with a brutal affront to our Creator and disregard of public 

 health, the life of the fishes that have the first right to all 

 water, and the natural beauty of all things that is little 

 short of a crime parallel with cold-blooded murder, for 

 nature proves, if bribed science wont, that this contam- 

 ination is the one cause of all the cases of typhoid and 

 other fevers that kill thousands of human beings every day ! 

 The dynamiting and netting of fishes by the ignorant 

 immigrant and our own country's unenlightened class, 

 the trawl and set net of the market fisherman, and the 

 greedy, wasteful barrel and tubful catches of the hand- 

 line fisher are next in order as means and methods of wan- 

 ton despoilation of the waters and their game. 



There are legal and moral laws that govern or should 

 govern the depredations of these destroyers, and anglers 

 should do all in their power to oppose or at least expose 

 the unlawful acts of the enemies of fishes and fishing. 



We all know the wasteful methods of the unscrupulous 

 class among net fishermen their killing of millions of 



