CONSERVATION OF INLAND FISHERIES 91 



PROif. Prince : I should feel very remiss if I did not express my deep 

 gratitude to Mr. Feilding for the very excellent paper which he has 

 read to us. It contains a large amount of food for thought and some 

 of the suggestions are of a very practical nature indeed. The question 

 of artificial fish culture — and he speaks with authority, because his life 

 has been devoted so greatly to that — is one of immense importance. 



He realizes that there are conditions in Canada which are some- 

 what peculiar and which have acted rather as deterrents to a pro- 

 gressive policy, especially on our Great lakes. We have always, in all 

 efiforts to do any work on the Great lakes in the way of improving 

 the fisheries and conserving the game, been confronted by the im- 

 portant fact that half of the waters are in the United States, and 

 any work of an effective character must be done in unison with the 

 states which carry on the fishery industries just across the imaginary 

 line. That has always been a difficulty, but we have had hopes of 

 overcoming it. I worked with Prof. Starr Jordan on the International 

 Commission on that line for some years, but we have been disalppointed 

 and I hope that Mr. Feilding may be more fortunate and get some 

 of the states to cooperate with him with good effect. 



If I grasped his argument with regard to close season aright, it 

 was that close seasons should vary very much to meet local conditions ; 

 that such a thing as a uniform close season for whitefish or trout or 

 pickerel might be unwise. To my mind the object of a close, season 

 is not to preserve every breeding fish, but to preserve or protect suffi- 

 cient breeding fish to keep up the supply and, if that can be done by a 

 season which covers a sort of average of breeding fish, it accomplishes 

 its object. Take the grey trout, of which some breed a month later 

 than others. If the close season in force covers sufficient breeding 

 trout, then a number of them may be caught and destroyed without 

 harm to the fisheries. In the case of the great lake trout, to which 

 Mr. Feilding has referred, it has a close season which certainly does 

 not fit the precise period of breeding, it only covers it partially. I have 

 always claimed that the close season was sufficient for the lake trout 

 and it has held its own sufficiently to enable very profitable business 

 to be carried on, while in the case of other fish, like the whitefish, there 

 has been a decline. Mr. Feilding struck the right note when he pointed 

 out how it was that the whitefish were falling off, although they have 

 a close season which seems to cover the whole period of their breeding. 

 The question of breeding and close season seems to me to depend upon 

 the kind of fish you wish to protect. A shorter close season would be 

 more effective for some kinds of fish than for other kinds. 



