REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELA- 
TIONS. 
BY MR. CHARLES G. ATKINS, OF EAST ORLAND, ME. 
The Committee on Foreign Relations in submitting its first 
report begs to presume that it was not expected that a single 
report, or two or three reports, could cover the whole field. In- 
deed, it needs but a cursory examination of the exhibit of the 
matter made by correspondence already in hand and by accessi- 
ble publications to show that it would be impossible to exhaust 
the subject, or even to keep fully up with the new matter of inter- 
esting and instructive character developed from year to year in 
foreign experience within any limits that would not swell the 
volume of annual transactions beyond practicable size. It has 
therefore appeared to your committee best to attempt no exhaus- 
tive treatment of any branch of the subject, but to endeavor to 
submit a series of brief summaries of the organization and sys- 
tem of fish cultural work in foreign countries together with a 
more minute treatment of such branches of the subject as may 
promise to be most helpful to American fish culture. 
In illustration of the world-wide interest in fishery subjects 
may be cited the successful organization at Paris in 1900, of the 
system of International Fishery Congresses by the appointment 
of a permanent International Commission, the original composi- 
tion of which embraced members from Germany, Austria, Switz- 
erland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Holland, Den- 
mark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Roumania, Great Britain, Japan, 
the United States of America, Mexico and Chili. The most of 
these countries have engaged in actual fish cultural work. 
The most important sources of information on this subject, 
outside of official reports, are perhaps the fishery periodicals of 
the world. A list which may not be exhaustive shows the exis- 
tence of three such periodicals in France, one in Belgium, two in 
Switzerland, one in Austria, one in Sweden, one in Denmark, 
one in Finland, and six in Germany. The German periodicals 
alone present the reader with over 3,000 pages of fishery litera- 
189 
