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fisheries to the inhabitants of the eastern coast, from 
Labrador to Nantucket, unless it were possible to cut off 
entirely for a time, the yields of fish from the bay of 
Fundy to Long Island Sound, we could not estimate how 
many of the citizens are dependent upon the products of 
the sea. As it is, the alarming diminution of the catches 
of mackerel, cod and lobster in those eastern states has 
gone far towards ruining some of the minor towns along 
the coast. 
The greed of speculators, who saw how well the fish- 
ermen were able to support themselves and their families 
with their primitive modes of obtaining their stock for 
trade, and who introduced purse-seines, drag nets, trawls, 
and weirs, thereby catching enormous quantities of fishes 
in all stages of their existence, and with blind fool hardi- 
ness glutting the markets—have bestowed upon the born 
fishers a trial, from which the older members of the com- 
munity can never recover, by draining the bays and coves 
of the larger and more valuable of all kinds of fishes. 
Those which their devices did not catch have been so 
frightened that they have left the runs; and unless the 
United States laws interfere with decisive and immediate 
exercise of their power, and forbid the use of those 
modes of fishing; both old and young inhabitants will 
forsake the coast, take up with some other industry in 
order to gain a living; or, worse still, they will leave 
their native land and go to the Canadian shores, from 
which even now there are great quantities of fish imported 
into this country. 
But let us hope that no such disaster may befall our 
honest fishermen and our eastern states ; instead, we 
must strive by every measure to increase the numbers 
and varieties of the beautiful food fishes, and to have 
laws enforced for their permanent protection. 
Perhaps because there is a greater proportion of water 
than Jand on the face of the earth, there is no more uni- 
versal article of food than fish in existence. Among the 
