ON THE PROTECTION OF FISH IN INLAND 
WATERS. 
BY DR. JAMES A. HENSHALL, OF BOZEMAN, MONT. 
Next in importance to the proper protection of fish and the 
replenishing of waters, is the proper protection of the waters 
themselves and the fish food in them. Indeed, there are those 
who deem the latter measure of more real and permanent benefit 
than artificial stocking. They argue that if the waters are kept 
free of pollution, and practicable fishways established on 
streams, the natural increase of fishes would render stocking by 
artificial methods unnecessary. This view seems _ plausible 
enough were the primitive conditions of the waters preserved 
and maintained. But such is not the case, and never will be. 
The natural conditions of all waters in the settled portions 
of our country have been changed. This change has been 
brought about by various activities that are the result of the so- 
called advance of civilization. Among them are the various 1n- 
dustries of lumbering, mining, manufacturing and agriculture, 
and the sewage of towns and cities. 
In lumbering it begins with logging. 
The breeding grounds of the trouts and graylings are in the 
tiny streams forming the headwaters of creeks and rivers. In 
their primitive state they were in the midst of coniferous for- 
ests, in whose solitude and shade the banks and borders of these 
rills and rivulets were clothed with a dense tangle of verdure, 
consisting of mosses, ferns and semi-aquatic vegetation. The 
spongy soil was saturated with moisture that not only main- 
tained and replenished the small streams, but favored the repro- 
duction of the larvee of myriads of insects, and the minute crus- 
taceans and mollusks, that formed the first food of the baby fish. 
Then these secluded precincts were invaded by the lumber- 
jack with his axe. The forest soon disappeared, the gloom and 
cool shadows of the arboreal recesses were dispelled by the ad- 
mission of the scorching rays of the summer sun, and the hot, 
dry winds of the highlands; the moisture was dissipated, the 
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