pit 
itself against the poacher. Whether it is also able ade- 
quately to protect itself against the poacher’s successor 
in interest still remains to be demonstrated. 
This gentleman of modern days is a radically different 
sort of person. He has money, intelligence, social 
position. The world’s progress enables him to carry on 
the work of fish culture on a scale the poacher never 
could have dreamed. The power of steam and of an 
apparatus unequaled in destructive efficiency vastly 
augments his catch. Not even these keep pace with 
the broadening of his market. Swift freights carry fish 
to the great centres of population where steady and 
remunerative demand is certain. If these fail him, 
refrigeration gives him a continent for his wares. 
Canning offers him a chance to save much of the balance. 
He has much to work for and a good deal to work with. 
All this means much to the situation. In the first 
place it gives the poacher’s successor allies and 
supporters the poacher never could have had. The 
men who sell his fish or can them are bound to be his 
friends. If he is a good shipper he can count on the 
open or covert assistance of the transportation com- 
panies who profit by his freights. Hotel men and many 
others who want fish and are not particular where they 
come from and when they are caught ; the persons who 
sell nets, seines and other equipments ; those who buy, 
sell or are interested in the ‘‘by-products” of the fisheries 
in oil, guano, etc., these and many others stand together 
for the ‘‘Commercial Fishermen,” as they are fond of 
calling themselves, their right to capture fish in any way 
and at all times. 
More than this, the modern enemy of fish preservation 
has learned a fact the poacher never knew or perhaps, 
rather, was never able to avail himself of, and that is that 
killing fish by law making is easier, safer and better than 
killing fish by law breaking. Fish preservers no longer 
have law making to themselves. It was the sting of the 
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