March 29, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



301 



oj-ster industry was for a long period neg- 

 lected; and the delivery of these states 

 from the thraldom of obsolete, ineflScient 

 and wasteful methods has depended on their 

 eventual willingness to accept zoological 

 facts as the basis for administration. 



Another of our great aquatic resources 

 that has suffered from the failure or refusal 

 of the states to be guided by the teachings 

 of zoology is the lobster. If the states had 

 given heed to the elementary needs of the 

 lobster as proclaimed by Herrick, instead 

 of shaping their course so as to conform 

 with the interests of those who for years 

 have been profiteering at public expense, 

 they could have made the lobster a staple, 

 moderate-priced food for all time, whereas 

 it has become such a rare and expensive 

 article that the food administration might 

 very properly place an embargo on its use 

 as a wholly unjustifiable extravagance. 

 One alleviating circumstance is that, 

 through the adoption of a sj-stem of arti- 

 ficial rearing devised hy the zoologist Mead, 

 the lobster supply in the waters of Rhode 

 Island has been maintained better than in 

 any other state. 



One of the most noteworthy cases of the 

 application of zoologj' to the public good is 

 the prompt use that the government made 

 of Lefevre and Curtis "s investigations of 

 the habits of the glochidia of the pearly 

 mu.ssels. The practical problem here pre- 

 sented was the maintenance of an industry 

 that supports many thousands of people 

 and directly affects eveiy man, woman and 

 child in the United States. It should be re- 

 membered to the everlasting credit of our 

 national law-making body that it was will- 

 ing on purely zoological claims, which were 

 the only ones that could be put forth at the* 

 time, to establish an expensive station and 

 adequate personnel for applying the results 

 of zoological researches and experiments. 

 The influence of that laboratory on the pol- 

 icy of the interested states has been great ; 



the immediate results of practical value 

 have been conspicuous ; and the way has 

 been made plain by which this great na- 

 tional resource, which far surpasses in value 

 and volume that of all other countries com- 

 bined, may be preserved through proper 

 utilization. 



Reference should be made to the extra- 

 ordinary advance in knowledge of the age 

 and growth of fishes that has come from re- 

 cent studies of their scales and bones, and 

 to the opportunity that is thereby afforded 

 for the first time to substitute facts for 

 guesswork in formulating protective fishery 

 laws bearing on the size and age of food and 

 game fishes. 



A year or two ago there arose a situation 

 in one of the largest seaboard cities where 

 ill-advised administrative action threatened 

 to exclude from the market one of the most 

 abundant and wholesome marine fishes, 

 with consequent disturbance of long-estab- 

 lished trade and serious loss to the fisher- 

 men even of remote regions. A real disaster 

 impended because a market inspector saw 

 certain parasites and misconstrued their 

 significance. The evil was averted by the 

 ability of the government to recommend to 

 the city authorities a zoologist with a most 

 convincing mass of zoological evidence, with 

 the result that the embargo was promptly 

 lifted and in all probability will never again 

 be placed in that community for such a 

 reason. 



The great contributions that zoology has 

 made to all branches of fishery work have 

 not exhausted the field. Dependence must 

 continue to be placed on zoological research 

 for the elucidation of the greater problems 

 that are looming. A hopeful sign of the 

 times is that the public now appears to be 

 more willing than ever before to defer to 

 and depend on the recommendations of zool- 

 ogy in the handling of fishery questions. 



Bureau of Fisheries, H. M. Smith 



Washington, D. C. 



