182 American Fisheries Society. 



then the law must be invoked. As I have stated elsewhere, 

 more than once, our diminished streams may be augmented 

 by boring artesian wells along their banks, whose flow of 

 water, when aerated, would furnish an additional supply of 

 oxygen. This is not at all chimerical. When a schoolboy 

 my geography taught me that there was three times as much 

 water as land on the globe ; and as there is nothing that has 

 ever existed on this planet that is absolutely destroyed, that 

 proportion of water must still exist. There are the seas, 

 lakes and rivers on the surface, and "the waters under the 

 earth." These subterranean waters can be reached and uti- 

 lized through artesian wells of various depths. There are 

 many small cities and towns that procure their water supply 

 in this way. 



When I was transferred as superintendent from Bozeman, 

 Montana, to Tupelo, Mississippi, I found a dozen artesian wells 

 on the grounds of the latter station, about four hundred feet 

 in depth. When first bored they were flowing wells, but when 

 the city of Tupelo bored a well about a thousand feet deep for 

 an additional water supply, it caused the water in the wells 

 of the station to drop about ten feet below the surface, and 

 the water had to be pumped. There were but two of the 

 station wells in use, operated by steam pumps. There were 

 three ponds, and this supply of water was inadequate, for the 

 output of large-mouth bass had never exceeded twenty thous- 

 and at any one season. I did away with the leaky boiler and 

 the steam pumps and substituted electric motors and four 

 pumps, and thereafter the output was never less than three 

 hundred thousand per season. If funds had been available 

 half a dozen more ponds could have been constructed, and the 

 rest of the wells utilized, and the output could have been in- 

 creased to a million each season. In this connection it is as 

 well to say that when our streams have diminished in size and 

 purity, and are Ashless, artesian wells may be bored on farms 

 or other private property, and stocked with fish. 



I have an abiding faith in the integrity and practical work- 

 ing of the American Fisheries Society. Because I am one of 

 its oldest members, and have served as its president, I trust 

 the Society may see its way clear to adopt a resolution mem- 

 orializing the Congress to institute measures to abate or miti- 

 gate the pollution of navigable rivers and coastal estuaries. 

 And I feel sure that individual members of the Society from 

 the various states will give aid and comfort to any state move- 

 ment looking to the alleviation of pollution of inland waters 

 from industrial waste and sewage, and will assist with their 

 counsel and influence in the work of any combined effort by 

 protective associations or conserv^ation organizations, or in 



