FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. II 



All just fish and game laws, broadly stated, are enacted to protect the fish and game 

 of the State during the breeding seasons and to allow for recuperation afterward, and 

 without such laws, rigidly enforced, artificial propagation, which is simply aiding and 

 improving upon nature, would be practically useless to maintain the supply of food 

 which comes under the head of fish and wild game. 



Of necessity, there are auxiliary laws to support the laws governing the breeding 

 seasons, and one which demands attention at this time is that which relates to the 

 pollution of streams. The present law on this subject is almost inoperative, because 

 of the provision that dyestuff, sawdust, etc., shall not be allowed to run into any waters 

 " in quantities destructive to the fish life," and it is a difficult matter to prove just 

 where the dividing line between life and death may be. Seven years ago a select 

 committee of the Senate of the Dominion Parliament conducted an inquiry into 

 the expediency of preventing sawdust and other refuse being cast into Canadian 

 waters, and in summing up the situation, after obtaining testimony on the subject 

 from engineers, fish culturists and scientists in the Dominion and a number of the 

 States, the following language was used : 



" Settling here and there in its course down the streams, the sawdust forms a 

 compact mass of pollution all along the bottom and the margins of the rivers and 

 inlets, filling up the crevices on the gravel beds, and among stones, where aquatic life 

 is invariably produced and fed. It becomes a fixed, imperishable foreign matter, 

 and adheres to the beds of streams and other waters, and forms a long, continuous 

 mantle of death, and constitutes an endless graveyard to the innumerable colonies of 

 insect life which inhabit this well-adapted abode for their existence. These, then, 

 are only some of the pestilential effects produced by sawdust and mill rubbish in the 

 waters of the country on fish life, and independent of its evil influences, from a 

 sanitary point of view, on human life, and its damaging effects by seriously impeding 

 navigation on many waters. Then why should the few, for self-aggrandizement only, 

 be permitted to continue this wicked devastating work for depleting the waters of 

 their legitimate supplies of food originally supplied by an allwise Providence for the 

 use of mankind ; and why should the many suffer for the few who still pursue and 

 unscrupulously advocate a continuance of this insidious and direful proceeding for 

 entailing ruin upon the fisheries of our country ? " 



It is claimed by some that sawdust and refuse from mills and factories will not 

 injure adult fish. Be that as it may, if the young fish and the food for both young" 

 and adult fish are destroyed there will be no adult fish. 



To extract briefly from a report prepared for the Vienna Exposition on the 

 decrease of food fishes : 



