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CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



General Review of the Resources of the Sea and the Influence of Man thereon. 



In this chapter is a general statement of facts which point 

 to the conclusion that, with some exceptions, the fauna of the 

 open sea, from its nature and environment, would appear, to a 

 large extent, to be independent of man's influence. 



In examining the resources of the sea^ we are confronted 

 with very different problems from those which meet us in the 

 consideration of the fresh waters and the land. Moreover, this 

 peculiar divergence has a tendency to mislead those whose 

 experiences have been accumulated in surroundings in which 

 all the operations of nature and of man are readily observed 

 and easily understood. 



It is but recently since we relied, for instance, on the know- 

 ledge derived from the effects of the non-protection of land- 

 animals as a guide in dealing with the sea-fishes. It satisfied 

 some to urge that man's influence had swept off the larger 

 mammals from great areas, and at the present moment is rapidly 

 diminishing the numbers of such forms as the right and other 

 whales, the elephants, giraffes, elks, buffalos and bisons. Com- 

 paratively recent legislation in our own country has year by 



1 By the sea is meant the open ocean and the exposed shores, for enclosed 

 seas, like the Mediterranean, are placed under different conditions as regards the 

 fisheries. Consequently the effect of man's interference in certain cases is 

 distinguishable — were it only in the single feature of the size of marine fishes 

 offered for consumption. 



M. R. 1 



