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alternative harvest, might occasion direful results. 
Famines periodically visit China and yet in various 
parts of that kingdom fresh fish is so cheap as to sell 
at the same price as wheat, and but little below that of 
rice, the abundance resulting from a comparatively rude 
method of pond culture. It becomes our superior 
civilization to extend better and more scientific methods, 
not only to our own inland but also to our marine 
waters, to endeavor to regulate, govern and direct the 
produce of the larger areas as systematically as we 
would the smaller. Water farming implies some 
methods of marine to those of terrene culture, certainly 
the encouragement of the growth of that which is good 
and the repression of that which is noxious. The 
grazier whose herds suffer devastation receives a measure 
of protection from the community, which is extended as 
an obligation to its members, and the bounties offered 
for the destruction of beasts of prey should also be 
applied to that of marine food destroyers. A few years 
ago a company prosecuted with several steamers a 
fishery for sharks, dog-fish, porpoises. and other 
destructive fish, their conversion into oil and guano 
promising a sufficient return. This expectation being 
disappointed, the fishery was abandoned, but its renewal 
under assurance of bounties should be thought worthy 
of encouragement. The extermination of predaceous 
fish is not to be hoped for but, inasmuch as man’s 
consumption of edible varieties is but a fraction of that 
of their marine enemies, the abatement of the latter 
as a public advantage merits public support. The 
substantial elimination of the formerly plentiful halibut 
from the New England coast necessitating its pursuit 
even into Polar seas, demonstrates what can be effected 
by the constant capture of a predatory fish. With the 
persistent exertion of fostering care upon the one hand 
and steady repression on the other, he is not a vain 
prophet who would predict of our marine waters the 
