Oshurn. — Conditions Detriynental to Bass. 41 



-geiieral revenues to carry on the woi'k of the Department of Fisheries 

 !had been getting more acute each year. About twelve years ago the 

 matter of requiring resident and non-resident fishing licenses was first 

 taken up. At each session of the Legislature for ten years I fought 

 to get some enactment of that kind on the statutes, and in 1922 it went 

 into efl"ect, not in the shape in which it was introduced into the House 

 and the Senate, but in the form of a compromise. The original bill as 

 introduced by the Department placed the minimum age limit at sixteen 

 years; the bill we got through made the minimum age limit twenty-one 

 years. After consulting the Governor on the question, v/ho helped in 

 every way to enact this law, we came to the conclusion that we had bet- 

 ter take half a loaf than no loaf at all, and depend on future legislation 

 to remedy any deficiency. In the first year that this law v/ent in to 

 effect, 1922, the Department sold 203,000 resident fishermen's licenses. 

 We had our oflUcers make a careful study as to the fishermen v»'ho were 

 fishing the streams, and Ave found that two-thirds of them were under 

 twenty-one years of ago. In 1923, out of the tui'moil we had in the 

 House and the Senate, v,e succeeded in having the maximum age 

 ■established at eighteen years, and the result is that we have sold this 

 year up to date resident licenses in the amount of $335,000. 



Mr. John P. Woods: At what price? 



Mr. Buller : One dollar. We think that at the next session of the 

 Legislature, with the educational campaign that we are carrying on 

 among the fishermen, we shall bo able to get the bill back to its original 

 shape, and we feel satisfied that we shall then sell every year 600,000 

 fishermen's licenses. There are 600,000 hunter's licenses sold in the 

 ptate to-day, and we feel, from the knowledge we have, that we have 

 as many fishermen as hunters. The men who are contributing this 

 ■money are entitled to take a few bass or other fish out of the streams 

 before they have had the chance to breed. They are the men we are 

 depending on today for funds, and they are the men upon whom, in my 

 judgment, every state in the Union will have to depend if we are suc- 

 cessfully to carry on our work. 



Mr. Titcomb: I was very much interested in Dr. Osburn's paper; 

 it covers a very large field. I would like to ask him to what extent he 

 ■examined the bass which he found egg-bound? 



Dr. Osburn: That has been chiefly the work of one of my assist- 

 ants, an instructor in the university, Mr. E. L. Wickliff. He has exam- 

 ined a great many of them, at Buckeye Lake especially. I had some bass 

 sent in to me by the Department of Fish and Game this spring which 

 were otherwise in perfect condition, but the eggs were degenerated and 

 a mass of mucous had formed a kind of block in the end of the oviduct. 



Mr. Titcomb: When they become egg-bound they subsequently die? 



Dr. Osburn: Some of them undoubtedly die in that condition; 

 but it is an open question what percentage of death is from that cause. 

 We had this same experience in the New York Aquarium with fishes 

 that could not spawn because conditions were abnormal. 



