258 



I wish to say another thing by way of criticism of our State Commission- 

 ers. They wanted to get some spawn of wall-eyed pike last spring ; they got a 

 man by the name of M. B. Hill, near Clayton, and they authorized him so Hill 

 says to set nets and take game fish illegally for spawn. I said to Hill, 

 " Why do you do this ?" He said : " You musn't find any fault with me ; I am 

 obeying orders." I said : " What do you call obeying orders ?" He said : " The 

 fish I take must go to the men for doing the work." They not only took the 

 spawn, but they killed the fish, and the fish were taken away and sold to the fish- 

 monger. We protested against it, and went so far as to get the District Attorney 

 after them, but they pulled the nets out a week too soon for us ; if we had been 

 a week earlier we would have caught the whole of them. When Col. Mc- 

 Donald and Mr. Blackford and I went up to Hill's fish-pond in July, I put 

 the question to Blackford : " Why is it, after the Legislature appropriates $85,- 

 000 to do this work, that the men that catch those fish have got to take the fish 

 and kill them and sell them to get their pay ?" He hardly knew what to say. 

 He said : " Does Hill say that ?" I said : " Yes, and further, he says he is work- 

 ing under orders." "Well," he says, "he ought not to doit, for the men were 

 paid." 



But I wish that Mr. Stewart would impress upon his colleagues, when he 

 comes to the St. Lawrence river netting, the necessity of prohibiting pound and 

 gill nets for the St. Lawrence river ; we do not want any pound nets nor any gill 

 nets. 



CHAIRMAN : I would like to ask you if netting on the St. Lawrence were 

 stopped entirely, whether it would be necessary to have any hatchery ? 



A. I think it would not, so far as the river is concerned, because we have 

 the natural fishing-beds and breeding-grounds that nature has provided there. 

 They were wall-eyed pike that they were killing after taking the spawn, and I 

 am satisfied that every game fish that they caught was killed and sold the same 

 as the wall-eyed pike. 



Q. Were nets set. to catch the muskallonge and pickerel for their spawn ? 

 A. No ; the muskallonge are propagated only at Chautauqua lake. 



I would like to say that Mr. Hill stated to me that if he were allowed to 

 take the wall-eyed pike for their spawn, he could save five out of everv 

 seven fish taken and return them to the water. He made the statement to me 

 that he was acting under orders ; that Monroe Green had engaged these men, and 

 the appropriation wasn't large enough to pay them, and the understanding was to 

 take the fish for their pay. 



CHAIRMAN : Hill is not now in the employ of the Commission, is he ? 



A. No, sir. 



Q. Did his dismissal arise from this ? 



A. That was one of the main factors, I inferred from Mr. Blackford. 



Q. You don't know whether he was retained by the Commission ? 



A. Mr. Blackford told me that those men were paid by the State, and Hill, 

 of course, we know was paid by the State. 



Dr. SMITH : I saw some of the fishermen who did this work. They under- 

 took it at the request of the State Fish Commissioners, and took out a portion of 

 their pay in fish, as I understood it, or as the gentleman has said, 'but they had 

 some difficulty; they thought they were not getting enough money, and ceased 



