Statistics of Fish. 73 
Legislature of Massachusetts required all the fishermen of 
the coast to make a report to the state fishery commissioner. 
The latter sent out blanks to the fishermen, and they have 
just published a report of the year’s operations. This is a 
good begining, and I hope will be continued; but with that 
exception, we have nothing of the sort in the United States. 
It is a matter of the utmost importance, as it is of the high- 
est interest, that we should commence and have the facts re- 
ported. I have prepared, hoping that I might induce the 
fish-dealers of New York to make a beginning, statements of 
the number of fish brought in here from the Eastern ceasts, 
with a view to have them used in correcting the figures in 
the books, so as to make up some sort of a statement of the 
fish-trade of the city of New York, and I will place those 
in the hands of as many as possible, so that we may endeav- 
or as soon as possible to get these facts. I will be very 
glad to furnish to the wholesale dealers all the blanks I can. 
If we had had figures at Halifax, we might have done some- 
thing to prevent the excessive award against the United 
States. I believe the American in-shore fisheries to be worth 
ten times as much as those of Canada. Though the Cana- 
dians do not use them, they have the right to do so, and if 
we had had these figures to show the enormous wealth of 
our fisheries, we might have done differently. I think we 
have lost millions of dollars by not having our catch of fish 
tabulated. Now this question must come up again. The 
provisional treaty began in 1873. It is now 1878, and within 
six or seven years more the question must be gone into 
Over again, and I hope that by that time we shall have 
such figures as will enable us to hold our own in com- 
parison with the statistics of Canada. And this is impor- 
tant, first, on account of the abstract propriety of having 
