72 Thirty-seventh Annual Meeting 



of private pond culture ; and the proneness to overindulgence in 

 meat is being offset by the increasing opportunities to have whole- 

 some fresh fish as regular components of our menu. The de- 

 mand for food and game fishes for stocking public and private 

 waters is taxing the capacit}^ of the hatcheries to the utmost, and 

 the response is seen in a larger output in the past year than ever 

 before in the history of the country; but the supply of many 

 kinds of fishes is entirely inadequate, and this fact is exemplitied 

 in the insistent demand for fish hatcheries in recent congresses 

 which culminated in a remarkable movement in the last session 

 of the last congress, when there were presented ninety-seven bills, 

 providing for seventy-four new fish cultural stations in forty- 

 two states and territories, and carrying appropriations aggregat- 

 ing $2,000,000. 



The progress of fish culture in America, however, must not 

 be gaged solely by the magnitude of the operations. Equally 

 important are the perfection in methods and the enhanced effi- 

 ciency of the results that have been brought about by the scien- 

 tific study of the fishes, their eggs, and their food in nature and 

 under domestication, and by the investigation of the physical, 

 chemical, and biological characters of the waters to be stocked. 

 Never before has the man of science co-operated more zealously 

 and effectively in the interests of the fisheries ; and never before 

 has the debt that the practical fisherman and the fish culturists 

 owe to the scientist been more generally acknowledged. The 

 necessity for scientific knowledge in the handling of fishery prob- 

 lems is so fully appreciated that those states which do not now 

 have trained biologists connected witli their fishery work are re- 

 garded as behind the times. 



The increased attention given to oyster culture is one of the 

 most hopeful signs of fishery advancement. The persistency and 

 vigor with which the inauguration of oyster planting was for a 

 long time opposed in some states was most disheartening to all 

 who had given the subject serious study and had seen the futility 

 of the do-nothing policy to which some of the states seemed to 

 he irrevocably committed. The state that had the most at stake 

 and was one of the last to recognize the benefits of oyster farm- 

 ing is Maryland; but having finally seen the error of her way, 

 she has approached the subject of the restoration of her suprem- 



