58 Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting 
erly, and it should be so worded that we are not obliged to make 
ichthyologists out of each one of the commercial fishermen—we 
have got to get some common names that will identify the differ- 
ent fish properly and have them plainly described in the laws of 
the different states. 
Mr. Seymour Bower: It seems to me a great deal of con- 
fusion and uncertainty would be avoided if, whenever a law is 
enacted for any kind of fish, the scientific name followed the 
common name. You won’t find that in any of our laws, and 
many cases that have been tried in this state have fallen through 
because only one of a number of common names was given; and 
there are a number of local or common names for nearly every 
kind of fish. Mr. Lydell was a witness in a case which fell 
through on those very grounds. Certain persons were arrested 
for catching black bass, and the defense was that they were not 
black bass, but “river bass”; and the defense made the jury be- 
lieve it and the case failed. Now if the scientific name had been 
inserted in the statute they could not have evaded the law on 
any such pretext as that. 
