nection it seems to me that one of the new commissioners 

 should be well up in fish culture. There is no limit to 

 the results that might obtain if the public realizes what 

 it will enjoy if pollution can be reduced. The shad situa- 

 tion has improved much in the past two years owing to 

 the legislation of 1919. When measures were taken to 

 protect their spawning beds. The lobster situation is 

 good. The work of the board has certainly produced re- 

 sults. Lobsters have steadily decreased in the past five 

 years. There is no Atlantic State where lobsters have 

 been more shamefully destroyed than in Connecticut. 

 Even Labrador and New Foundland have long closed 

 seasons which are strictly enforced. Connecticut sets out 

 lobster pots 365 days in the year. It is a difficult matter 

 to enforce the law on short lobsters and female lobsters 

 except in the market. 



Mr. John B. Burnham, President of the American Game 

 Protective Association, has put the case of free public 

 shooting as forcibly as anyone. His statement follows: 



Events in the next few years in my judgment will de- 

 termine whether we will continue our present system of 

 free shooting in this country or adopt the European plan. 

 In other words, whether the man who owns a gun and has 

 the price of a box of shells and nothing more will continue 

 shooting game or be wiped off the map for all time as a 

 sportsman. We have been approaching this crisis threat- 

 ening the elimination of free shooting for many years, 

 but our innate Amercanism has fought against it. The 

 organized sportsmen have originated expedients not pos- 

 sible in other countries and so postponed the evil day. 



It is a legislative battle and an educational battle. 

 Many people honestly believe that it is useless to try and 

 preserve any shooting for the non-land holding sports- 

 men. The country is filling up so rapidly, and land in- 

 creasing in acreage value so fast, they say, that to meet 

 interest charges on the investment game must pay its 

 share and be bought the same as any other crop. It is a 

 fact, as they point out, that across the. water, land dedi- 

 cated to game raising produces a much larger harvest 

 of game to the square mile than similar acres in this 

 country, and they tell us that our only salvation lies in 

 copying European methods and laws. 



I do not agree with this, first, because our American 

 system, which is the growth of a hundred and fifty years, 

 is better than the European system, secondly, because I 



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