FOREIGN AND COLONIAL FISHERIES 253 



carry out the idea that it is better to expend a small amount of 

 public money in making fish so abundant that they can be caught 

 without restriction, thus serving as cheap food for the people at 

 large, than to expend a much larger sum in preventing the people 

 from catching the few fish that remain after generations of im- 

 providence. Dr. Smith is of opinion that from this standpoint it is 

 perhaps fortunate that up to the present the Bureau has not had 

 to devote its major energies to the formulation and enforcement of 

 fishery legislation, but has been able to work directly for the increase 

 of fish life. The neglect of some of the states to provide the mini- 

 mum protection to certain species inhabiting interstate and inter- 

 national waters has not only negatived the fish-cultural work of 

 the Bureau and of the States themselves, but has practically 

 inhibited it by preventing the possibility of securing an adequate 

 supply of eggs, thus making desirable and necessary the institution 

 of a new policy, placing interstate and international waters under 

 the jurisdiction of the Central Government. 



Dr. Smith sa3rs that in the work of the Bureau of Fisheries the 

 United States Government has an especial and unique claim to 

 the term " Paternal." From year to year, as the importance of 

 the work has become increasingly evident, additional hatcheries 

 have been built, the capacity of existing hatcheries enlarged, the 

 scale of the operations extended, new species of fish added to the 

 output, and new sections brought under the direct influence of the 

 work. At the end of the first decade of the Bureau's existence the 

 fish that were being regularly cultivated were shad, carp [Cyprinus 

 carpio), chinook salmon {Oncorhynchus tschawytscha) , Atlantic salmoa 

 (Salmo salar), landlocked salmon {Salmo sebago), rainbow trout 

 (S. irideus), brook trout {Salvelinus fontinalis), and white-fish. In 

 addition, the propagation of several other species had been under- 

 taken experimentally. At the present time the main energies are 

 devoted to important commercial fish, such as the shad, white- 

 fish, lake trout {Cnstiv,omer namaycush), Pacific salmons (various 

 species of Onchorhynchus) , white perch [M or one americana), yellow 

 perch {Perca flavescens) , cod {Gadus callarias), flat-fish {Pseudopleu- 

 ronectes amencanus) , and the lobster {Homarus americanus) , which 

 are hatched by the million annually. A still more popular branch 

 of the Bureau's activities is the distribution of those fish of the 

 interior waters which are generally classed as game fishes. The 

 fish hatcheries are established by special act of Congress ; their 

 location and construction are determined by the Bureau after a 

 careful survey of the available sites in a given state. While marine 

 operations have been conducted from time to time at various places 

 on the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida, and addressed to a 



