82 Fish Cultural Association. 
watchfulness in carrying out the law, which prevents the 
fishermen from catching salmon day in and day out during the 
open season. Fish have, then, in the waters of the provinces, a 
breathing-spell. Gravid fish may mount the stream and repro- 
duce their kind. The decreased catch of salmon on the Pacific 
coast this year may perhaps be attributed to this want of 
care in providing for certain close-days. We believe, then, 
with regard to shad at present, and for salmon ini‘the.) fu- 
ture, that without some protective legislation we shall never 
be able to gain the full benefit of the harvest sown if we 
consume the grain entirely, keeping none for the seed. 
Tue Presipent: I will say in confirmation of Mr. Black- 
ford’s paper, that the necessity of a closed term, espe- 
cially for shad, was manifest to the New York Commission- 
ers when they were appointed in 1868. It was necessary 
that for at least one day in the week the fish could go 
through the barriers to their spawning-ground. That was 
strongly recommended, and a law authorizing a weekly 
closed term, from Saturday to Monday, was recommended 
and drawn up and submitted with their report. No notice 
being taken of it, it was in the second year again recom- 
mended and submitted, and the same result following, the 
same thing was repeated the third year, and so we went on 
for four or five years, pressing this closing strongly on the 
attention of the Legislature, but not lobbying to carry it 
through, because we thought that improper and undigni- 
fied, until at last we made up our minds that we would 
have to get the community waked up. We considered 
that it was necessary to fill the North River with at least 
two hundred millions of shad. The greatest number of 
eggs which we could obtain did not reach more than ten 
