THE ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION OF SEA-FISHES. 359 



delicacy trembles to a case like this. What know we of Nature's 

 infinite equipoise ? Such organisms are their own excuse for 

 being, and, if by any chance they serve at length the aesthetic 

 sense of some creature intellectual, his is the good fortune ; their 

 destiny waxes not nor wanes. 



THE ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION OF SEA-FISHES. 



By Prof. W. K. BROOKS, 



Or JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 



SOME years since the writer was much impressed by an article 

 by Prof. Huxley, in " The Popular Science Monthly," on the 

 artificial propagation of food-fishes, in which he recognizes the 

 value of the economic results which have followed the culture of 

 the fishes of inland waters, but gives very emphatic expression to 

 Iris belief that man's influence, either for good or for bad, upon 

 the infinite wealth of the ocean, is so very slight as to be abso- 

 lutely without significance. He argues that an oceanic species 

 which is rich enough in individuals to resist all the enemies which 

 prey upon it can be in no danger from man. If, he says, it is able 

 to hold its own in the fierce struggle with the natural conditions 

 of its existence, the loss of the few individuals, which are all that 

 the human fishermen are able to capture, can not possibly lead to 

 its extermination, nor even exert any noteworthy influence upon 

 its abundance ; nor can man, he argues, by artificially fertilizing 

 a few million eggs, and by rearing a few million young fishes, 

 cause any appreciable increase in the abundance of a species 

 which includes countless millions of adult fishes, each of which 

 has the power to leave behind it millions of descendants. 



As compared with the natural reproductive power of the cod- 

 fishes upon the Grand Banks, the efforts of man to artificially 

 increase the supply sink into absolute insignificance, and Hux- 

 ley's statement of the case seemed to me at the time to be con- 

 vincing ; but I have recently been able to investigate the subject 

 for myself, and I am now satisfied that his opinions are not be- 

 rond question. As I am well aware that their influence has been 

 far-reaching, and has much to do with current views, I take this 

 opportunity to state my reasons for the change in my own opin- 

 ion, as I wish to call attention to what I now consider a serious 

 fallacy in his argument. If man's destructive influence were simi- 

 lar in kind to that of the other enemies of marine food-fishes, it 

 would undoubtedly be quite true that the numbers destroyed by 

 him are as nothing when compared with those which are de- 

 stroyed in other ways ; but the danger which comes from man's 



