American Fisheries Society. 139 
advice when great questions of this kind arise? For it is a great 
question to introduce into the waters of a state, or of a nation, a 
fish about whose habits you know nothing except as they occur 
on the other side of the ocean; and however, they may have been 
on the other side they certainly are different when they get here; ’ 
and I think (as a lay brother having particular glee in getting 
back at the scientist again) that in the future, if somebody offers 
a species of fish that is great and good in another country, it 
would be the part of wisdom—to try it out in a secluded spot 
well fenced in, before giving it to the nation at large to the de- 
struction of the better fishes. (Applause. ) 
Mr. Meehan: I fully agree with Mr. Whish in regard te 
keeping our indigenous fishes, but I cannot agree with him in 
laying the blame on the scientific man. From the experience I 
have had I rather think he has the wrong pig by the tail. My 
experience has been (and it has covered a great many years in 
fish-cultural work) that the real offender is the lay brother and 
not the scientific man. 
Going back for a number of years to the carp, which is per- 
haps the beginning, the real responsibility for introducing that 
fish rests not so much with the man who introduced it and spoke 
of it in the first place, as with the people themselves. They heard 
about it, wanted it and demanded it, and they forced it in many 
cases against the advice of scientific men. The same thing to my 
certain knowledge is true in Pennsylvania, at any rate so far as 
the brown trout is concerned. The anglers demanded it; they 
said: “Here is a fine fish; we have heard a great deal about this 
fish, the Isaac Walton fish and the brown trout, and we want it in 
our streams ;” and when the commissioners or those who were 
responsible refused to give it to them, they went to the members 
of the legislature, and the members of the legislature went to the 
commissioner and said: “No brown trout, no appropriation.” 
(Laughter.) That is responsible for the introduction of the 
brown trout and the introduction of the carp in many places, at 
any rate, and it is the same thing today in regard to other fishes. 
I have people, “lay brothers,” who have come to me and want 
lake trout and black spotted trout and black bass and calico bass 
and rock bass and every other kind of fish, planted in a single 
