g2 FISH-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
Puritan State have arisen from the same question that vexed the 
old Hollanders in early days, as to whether the codfish took the 
hook or the hook took the codfish. [Laughter.| I do not know 
whether that point is settled yet. The State of Massachusetts 
should be proud of her fisheries. ‘I remember having the honor 
of being arrested at 3 o’clock in the morning with General But- 
ler, in the House of Representatives, in my attempt to break 
down the proposition to pay over to England the $5,500,000 
growing out of the fishery award. I heard Mr. Rice, another 
member from Massachusetts, contend for the abrogation of the 
fishing treaty, which now allows fish to come in free from the 
Dominion of Canada. I sustained him in that, not because I was 
unwilling to have fish come in free to this country, but because 
I did not want fish to come free from Canada or Great Britain, 
who had cheated us out of $5,500,000. Throughout this whole 
subject Massachusetts has played a most prominent part. Why 
not? New England is the home, if not the mother, of invention. 
The feature which most interests us here to-night is the inven- 
tive faculty. It has been shown in such a remarkable degree in 
fishing, and chiefly in New England, in connection with improve- 
ments for the catching of fish. These were displayed on a mag- 
nificent scale at Berlin, in 1880, and in London in 1883. 
You may remember that a certain weaver at Lyons invented 
his famous net, which revolutionized fishing. They arrested him, 
and the great War Minister Carnot, sent for him to come before 
the great Napoleon. The Minister said: “ Are you the man that 
can do what God cannot?—tie a knot ona stretched string?” And 
they put him gently under arrest, for fear he would go to Eng- 
land and there introduce his net. 
Since then we have made remarkable strides in the invention 
of fish apparatus. We now use steam as an adjunct and the 
great purse-seine. In the whale fisheries the harpoons are no 
longer of the old sort, but explosive. Not satisfied to blow 
up dynasties with dynamite, we blow up whales with it. | Laugh- 
ter) 
But the great element of advancement was not discovered per- 
haps as early as some think—in Japan or China. Our learned 
friend fixed it at about 150 years ago,.but I have data to show 
