FISH PROTECTION. 
BY OREGON MILTON DENNIS. 
(Secre ary and Counsel Maryland Staite Game aud Fish Protective Association. 
Assistant Stute Game Warden.) 
Great difficulty is at once apparent, especially to you, gentle- 
ment, of presuming to suggest a solution of this great question 
of fish protection. This condition is brought about, first, by 
the belief that he, the fisherman, has an inherent and inalienable 
right of fishery, which has come to him through a long line of 
ancestry in the same way in which an estate tail operated at 
common law, and a right which neither his fellow citizens, land 
owners or the state can take from him, or in any sense abrogate. 
That the right of the state to legislate for the protection of fish 
was settled as far back as the Magna Charta is of small concern 
to him. 
The first problem then is the education of the takers of fish 
as to the right of the state to legislate for their protection and 
to make him understand and believe that the only interest that 
the state has in passing legislation for their protection is for his 
protection, for the state derives no benefit per se from the in- 
crease of fish in the waters within its boundaries, but the pro- 
ceeds thereof go directly to the fisherman. 
Then again, fish protection does not appeal to the fisherman 
as does game and bird protection to the hunter and sportsman. 
The absence of sentiment and the application of the senses of 
sight and sound which appeal to the aesthetic nature of men 
as well as of women whose early morning slumbers are brought 
to an end by the beautiful songs and warblings of the song- 
birds ; the beauty of their plumage to the sight, the steady arm 
and true aim of the sportsman who kills his pheasant or his 
quail or his deer or his rabbit—none of these things appeal to 
the fisherman, who throws his net trusting to Providence or 
good luck to fill it with the finny tribe 

not. that any of his 
senses shall be gratified or his troubled brain soothed by song, 
but how much will the catch be worth. This is the only senti- 
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