A Sportsman 301 



the Pacific Coast, since those familiar with the subject 

 say that the codfish grounds of the northern Pacific 

 are as proUfic and non-exhaustible as those of the 

 banks of Ne^vfoundland. In this connection with 

 fishes as a food product of the future, I am reminded 

 of the able report on the North Sea Fisheries, read at 

 the great Fisheries Exhibition in London, in which 

 it was stated that, despite the greatly increased popula- 

 tion of Europe, and the increasing consumption of fish, 

 owing to the ready distribution of fresh fish by rail- 

 roads, that the North Sea, which is the prominent 

 European field of supply, was estimated to be able 

 to furnish for consumption from three to five times 

 the present demand, without likelihood of any notice- 

 able exhaustion. This is cheerful information for 

 those who are puzzling their brains with a fear of a 

 demonstration of the Malthusian theory of over- 

 population, which, at the present rate of increase of 

 population the world over, is proceeding at a ratio 

 which cannot long be sustained; still we have a good 

 leeway, and until a thousand millions of human beings 

 dominate the North American continent, and an equal 

 number the Southern, and as many more in Africa, 

 and a thousand million or so more for the open situa- 

 tions of the world, we need not have apprehension, and 

 we may reflect that the salt ocean alone could supply 

 without exhaustion, at the present time, a weight of 

 production equal to that daily consumed of various 

 products by the human race. 



Of the Sah}ionid(B and its several genera found 

 in the temperate and Arctic regions, the salmon 

 is the most interesting and plentiful, and schools in 

 the north Pacific in immense numbers, extending 



