THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 85 
out with his “‘ Harvest of the Sea,” in which by fact and figure 
he aims to show just the opposite, namely, that the open sea fish 
had decreased by overfishing. . 
The question of the progressive exhaustion of sea fisheries 
came up six years later in America, in the form of a monster pe- 
tition presented to the Massachusetts legislature, which was 
asked to pass a law restricting fishing with weirs, seines and gill 
nets. The petitioners alleged that valuable fishes, such as the 
scup, the tautog and the striped bass, were taken by the above 
mentioned contrivances in so wholesale a way as to threaten 
their speedy extinction. The complaints applied chiefly to the 
southern waters, including those of Narragansett bay, where the 
inhabitants of Rhode Island were equally interested, and both 
States proceeded to investigate the subject. Their methods, 
however, were no better than had been those of the English Com- 
missioners, and consisted chiefly in the examination of numer- 
ous witnesses. It was the same story over again. The weir men 
swore against the hook-and-line fishermen and the hook-and-line 
fishermen swore against the weir men. The moment had evi- 
dently arrived to abandon the methods of the court-room and to 
take up those of scientific investigation. 
To this end the Massachusetts Commissioners, in the spring 
of 1881, hired a weir at Waquoit, on the south side of Cape Cod, 
and put it in charge of an observer, who kept a daily record of 
the fishes taken, of the wind and weather, and of the tempera- 
ture of air and water. At the end of the season the results 
were embodied in a report, entitled “Third Notice upon the 
Possible Exhaustion of Sea Fisheries.” It was shown by this 
investigation that the moment at which fishes leave the ocean to 
enter rivers is determined by the temperature of the water. It 
further appeared that these so-called anadromous fishes are usu- 
ally caught in weirs and in similar traps when hurrying along 
the coast in their northward migrations, whereas those that ar- 
rive near or at the mouth of their native river slacken their pace 
and cautiously feel their way, like a ship standing into a harbor. 
These last are more apt to avoid the nets ingeniously set for 
their capture. 
Up to this time the movement in favor of fish-culture had been 
