82 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



all the filth. So may the cat-fish and the eel§ thrive in the mud of our 

 rivers, but the bass and tautog never can. 



But the impure water is not the only nor the greatest evil of filth 

 emptied into the bay. The great deposits that settle from it and cover 

 the bottom, where the tide is insufficient to carry it off, by its accumu- 

 lation must destroy much of the small animal and vegetable life that 

 would otherwise furnish food and shelter to the fish. The effect of the 

 impurity in the water is very observable in the oysters of Taunton Eiver, 

 which have become so impregnated with copper, since the introduction 

 of the works near the river, as to destroy their value for food. Similar 

 results have been noticed from gas refuse. 



FREEDOM OF FISHING. 



At the Creation, " God said. Let the waters bring forth abundantly 

 the moving creatures that have life, and every living creature that 

 moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly ; and God saw that 

 it was good." 



After the creation of mankind, male and female, the first gTeat boon 

 conferred upon them by their Maker was dominion over the fish of the 

 sea. So it appears that man's dominion over the fish of the sea does 

 not date with the charter of Charles II and his Khode Island Colony, 

 but is contemporaneous with the creation of the world ; since which time 

 man has continued to exercise it without limit or restriction, as inclina- 

 tion or interest dictated. 



That he first exercised it by the use of that most suggestive and sim- 

 ple appliance, the hook and line, of which we have a very early account, 

 is evident ; but the increased population causing an increased demand, 

 soon suggested to the progressive spirit of man a better way, and 2,500 

 years ago the Sacred Historian says : " As fishes of the sea that have 

 no ruler over them, they take up all of them with the angle, they catch 

 in their net and gather them in their drag, because by them their por- 

 tion is fat and meat plenteous." Thus defining God's first boon as an 

 unrestricted use of the fisheries, that were without a ruler, and showing 

 an appreciation of the means used and the great good resulting from 

 their use : and then exclaimed the good prophet, " Shall they therefore 

 empty their net that brings fatness and plenty?" 'Sot only was an ad- 

 vance made in fishing, but they also made sluiceways and ponds for 

 fish. 



In Christ's time nets were much used, and a sort of net that was cast 

 from the ship's side, and thence taken back into the ship like the purse- 

 nets of our day. The shore-seines then used must have been large ones, 

 for it was not considered that 200 cubits (300 feet) was far from land. 

 " They were not far from land, but, as it were, 200 pubits, dragging their 

 net with fishes." " Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land full 

 of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three." It was thus tliat they 

 exercised dominion over the fish of the sea, and sometimes made great 

 catches, but often " toiled all night and caught nothing." A fiuctuating 

 fortune, common to fishermen of all ages. 



Those fishermen of Gallilee were countenanced and encouraged by 

 Christ, and were of the first from whom he chose his Apostles. We 

 hear notliing of hook and line at this time, but can hardly liope to make 

 our hook-and-line friends believe it was because that method had be- 

 come obsolete; but certainly we do not find them mentioned by the 

 Sacred Historian after other methods were mentioned. 



it then appears that in other ages improvements were made in fish- 



