218 Thirty-fourth Annual Meeting. 
the catching of them was so reckless and wasteful, that they 
were soon exterminated from those places. Now at many of 
those points they are reappearing, notably in the Detroit River. 
All of you who are familiar with whitefish planting know that 
a planted fish can be told from a native. We know that the fish 
which are coming in now are the results of planting. 
When these fish appear in sufficient numbers they will again 
attract the attention of the fishermen and will be again extermi- 
nated. Without the power to protect its own work it is per- 
fectly clear that even the United States cannot keep up and 
make good against the reckless destruction of fish that now goes 
on in that chain of lakes on which eight states border. Each of 
those states is interested in the great fishing industry in those 
waters, but every state in the Union is concerned in having the 
fisheries so conducted that the bountiful supply of edible fish 
which nature has provided, shall remain for the present and 
future generations. 
In the very nature of things the laws of the different states 
intended to protect the edible fish supply, are not and never will 
be uniform. What one state deems wise another does not. Some 
have a closed season, others have not. Some have it at one time 
and some at another. The evils growing out of this situation 
have long been recognized, especially by those living around the 
lakes. Meetings have been held by representative men from the 
bordering states and from the Dominion of Canada, but no satis- 
factory agreement as to what should be done has ever been 
reached, nor has there been any uniformity of opinion upon the 
most important questions until last April. At that time such a 
meeting was held in Chicago and there appeared a determina- 
tion to get together. The result of the meeting was that we did 
agree upon several recommendations to be made to the respect- 
ive legislatures of the states represented. But the sad sequel of it 
all is that no two of the legislatures agreed to nor followed these 
recommendations. Some states followed some part of them, 
other states followed some other part, but there was no uni- 
formity and no unanimity. So that we are just where we started 
—nothing accomplished. 
In the meantime the food fishes, generally speaking, are dis- 
appearing from the lakes. Although the federal government 
