92 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



say tliat '^ it appeared in the evidence that tlie scuj), tautog, sea-bass, 

 and striped bass, in Buzzard's Bay, have diminished during the last 

 few years, comparatively few having been caught in that locality 5" and 

 the joint special committee of Rhode Island, in their report, after a 

 careful review of the whole subject, and in view of its " profound in- 

 tricacy," say that " the oral and written testimony laid before the com- 

 mittee establishes the fact that, whereas scup were formerly abundant 

 in the waters of Narragansett Bay, and constituted a cheap and nutri- 

 tious article of food to the inhabitants, readily found and easily caught, 

 they have gradually left these waters, until they are quite abandoned 

 by this species of fish, and partially so by other species." 



Then, from the testimony of all the witnesses in Massachusetts, except 

 the trappers, and one Bearse, from Hyannis, who was not surpassed by 

 any one on the stand in the exhibition of ignorance and prejudice, that 

 these fishes had diminished in Vineyard Sound, and we have three very 

 considerable and important fishing waters, in which these fish had 

 formerly been abundant, where now they have become scarce. 



The fact of the scarcity having been so entirely proved, the report of 

 the " minority of the committee on fishes" in Rhode Island finds it 

 necessary to say, " and if these fish do not come into the bay as plenty 

 as formerly, we can only suppose that there are some conditions neces- 

 sarily wanting;" and the committee in Massachusetts accounts for it in 

 these four ways : 



1. That they have merely disappeared. 



2. By reason of the scarcity of food. 



3. From iinj)urities in the water. 



4. The blue-fish have destroyed or driven them. 



Let us revievf the evidence going to sustain these several positions iu 

 their order. 



1. That they have merely disappeared. 



The Massachusetts committee, in their report, say that it does not 

 necessarily follow that when fish leave a locality they have been driven 

 away by over-fishing; nor has any such thing l3een claimed. What is 

 claimed is, that in these waters, and with reference to these particular 

 fishes, they have been destroyed or taken in such large quantities just 

 before or at the time of spawning that any increase is impossible. The 

 significant fact is, that they have disappeared from these several waters 

 at the same time, and have steadily, not suddenly, decreased. 



If they have not been exhausted, but have only left the locality, is it 

 not a little remarkable that these four different species of fish should 

 not only have agreed to leave these several localities at one time, but 

 that they should not have appeared iu great numbers anywhere else ! 



Mr. Atwood says that "all agreed that the scup, tautog, sea-bass, and 

 striped bass had, within a few years, diminished in Buzzard's Bay, but 

 failed to show that over-fishing was the cause of the diminution." They 

 were not bound to show any such thing. Having proved that the fisli 

 had become scarce, and that they had done so since the setting of the 

 pounds and traps, it was the duty of the committee not to take sides 

 with the trappers, but, acting under their oaths, on behalf of the people 

 of the commonwealth, to force the trappers to show, as logically they 

 were bound to do, that their novel and wholesale methods were not the 

 cause of it. 



There was not a particle of evidence before either of these committees 

 going to show that these fishes had disapi)eared — that is, changed their 

 ground — nor any evidence that they were of tiie kind of fishes that ap- 

 l)ear here in one place at one time, and then in another place at another 



