212 American Fisheries Society. 



For this reason it would seem that the money spent in main- 

 taining such supposedly useful stations might better be expended 

 on thoroughgoing investigations with the view to determining 

 as accurately as possible just what value such fish cultural opera- 

 tions may have. Ultimately the question to be considered enters 

 the field of political economy. Can the taxpayers' money now 

 being directed to the support of marine hatcheries be shown to 

 be doing what is expected of it? 



Europeans have paid more attention to this study of the 

 rationale of the problem than have our own students and a num- 

 ber of the former have already committed themselves to the 

 belief that the entire efforts of cultivating marine fishes should 

 be thrown into the discard, because, according to their views, the 

 only real factors controlling the fluctuations of oceanic fishes 

 are to be found among various climatic functions far beyond the 

 present control of man, and it was not without much study and 

 careful reasoning that they have arrived at their conclusions. 

 These naturalists have taken into consideration such factors as 

 the melting of polar ice and the seasonal variations in the 

 amounts of sunshine and shade. For the present, however, we 

 may leave this phase of the problem without discussing the 

 probability of truth to be found in their beliefs and content our- 

 selves with the platitude that the ocean or even an arm of it 

 cannot be treated simply as an overgrown millpond but must be 

 considered in proportion to its increased complexity as well as 

 its greater size, for it must be borne in mind that any important 

 bay or sound always has a considerable contact with the open 

 water. 



A consideration of the reports of the United States Bureau 

 of Fisheries will in itself demonstrate the truth of some of these 

 considerations. For example, a study of the statements of the 

 amounts of cod, Gadus cdlarias Linn., landed at Boston, Gloucester 

 and Portland, together with the number of cod fry recorded as 

 having been liberated from the Woods Hole hatchery will reveal 

 a rather interesting condition. If there are equal numbers of 

 both sexes of this fish in the sea, the following corollary must be 

 true. Out of the million odd eggs laid by each female and fecun- 

 dated by the milt available from one male, but two would have 

 to hatch and reach the age and spawning condition of the parents 

 which may here be called "maturity," to maintain a status quo. 



