146 BRITISH FISHERIES 



million pounds of salmon, besides bass, sturgeon, 

 and smelt, and worth at first hand between 

 $4,000,000 and $6,000,000, are entirely under the 

 control of the fish-culturists to sustain or destroy, 

 and are capable of immense extension." ^ 



But however opinion may differ as regards the 

 utility of the fish-cultural work of the Commission, 

 there can be no question as to the value (first of 

 all to science, and ultimately, no doubt, to the 

 commercial fisheries) of the immense mass of 

 information embodied in the scientific papers 

 published by the staff and by volunteer work, in 

 the ofHcial reports — the Bulletin of the U.S. 

 Fish Commission and the Commissioner s Report. 

 Very many of these, perhaps the greater 

 number, relate to surveys of fishing grounds 

 in American waters, and are of interest to the 

 student of American industries rather than to the 

 general European reader. But a great number 

 relate also to general biological problems and to 

 systematic zoological work, and are therefore of 

 universal scientific interest, and it is by these that 

 the scientific work of the Commission is widely 

 known. One result of all this work deserves 

 special attention : although the scientific investi- 

 gations had a close relation to administrative 

 problems, and the diminution and protection of 

 the fisheries, no legislative restrictions resulted 



1 U.S. Fish Commission, Commissioner's Report for 1884, 1886, 

 p. 1161. 



