70 Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting 
taken from the river, nor until within a distance of six or seven 
miles from its mouth, as can be testified by a gentleman now 
present (Mr. Wires). ‘Today the men we have there do not see 
any caught within nine or ten miles of that river, and the bot- 
tom of the bay is literally covered with old bark and sawdust. 
Now, if it was not these polluting substances that came down the 
river from the mills, that drove the whitefish out, pray tell me 
what it was. I know there were many caught from the river 
fifty or sixty years ago, as the evidence is indisputable. If it 
was not the pollution that drove them out, what was it? 
Mr. Nevin: Do coal ashes have any effect ? 
Mr. Clark: I think any pollution in the water will hurt the 
whitefish more or less, and there should nothing go in that is in 
any way harmful. 
Mr. Titeomb: This is a subject upon which we could receive 
testimony continually for a long time. I am sorry that Mr. 
Marsh is not here from the Bureau, because he has been making 
some laboratory tests with water taken from sewers and from 
rivers below the tail-races of mills, and he has by that means dis- 
covered the effects of different kinds of pollution. I think that 
most of the so-called pollution referred to in the Illinois river, 
is the wash from the farmlands and is not very injurious to fish ; 
and I am told that when the cornfields are overflowed the carp 
and big mouth bass grow best, and they appear to stand any 
amount of muddy water. But our pollution in New England is 
largely from factories in clear water streams, and that stuff kills 
the fish. On the Delaware river this season I learned that the 
oil steamers come in at Neweastle, Delaware, in ballast with 
water; that while it is contrary to law to empty that water out 
after they arrive at port, they do violate the law, and that water 
is so polluted that it kills the fish. In the vicinity of the vessel 
schools of young shad have come up on shore, dead. Near the 
Du Pont powder works and in other places whole schools are 
killed by direct pollution in that way. 
Mr. Boardman: I have listened to a good many discussions 
about carp and I asked a commercial fisherman at Spring Lake 
what he thought about carp, and he said they certainly lessen 
