THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



159 



Photograph by George Shiras, 3<* 



A COW MOOSE AT THE SAME SPRING 



Here a bull moose had been illegally killed by natives just before the party's arrival and its 

 festering body soon drove the other animals away (see page 188). 



The prompt termination of this inde- 

 fensible practice, and the equally bad one 

 of running gill nets to the shore, would 

 in a very few years restore the finest of 

 fresh-water game fish to approximately 

 their former numbers. 



WHITEElSH FISHING WANES AS HERRING 

 INCREASES 



The whitefish, especially those of Lake 

 Superior, have been generally esteemed 

 as the most delicious of all fresh-water 

 species, and when the nets were few and 

 far apart and the methods of transporta- 

 tion and distribution unsatisfactory, mil- 

 lions of pounds were taken each season, 

 while today, with a hundred times greater 

 number of nets, a much higher market 

 price, and rapid means of distribution, 

 but a fraction is caught. 



The following figures, furnished by the 

 U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, tell the story: 

 Whitefish, 1885, 8,000,000 pounds; 1918, 

 300,000 pounds. Thus it is apparent that 

 this excellent fish is commercially extinct, 

 but with a sufficient remnant left, if. pro- 

 tected for a while, to be restored in 

 waters always favorable for their sup- 

 port. 



At one time the lake trout were in little 

 demand, for the whitefish dominated the 

 western markets, yet even then, with a 

 few nets set, the annual catch approached 

 3,000,000 pounds, so abundant were they 

 everywhere in Lake Superior. 



The fishermen of Michigan, Wiscon- 

 sin, Minnesota, and western Ontario now 

 use sail-boats, launches and tugs for 

 gathering the daily catch, setting gill and 

 pound nets in all parts of the lake, some- 

 times two hundred feet below the sur- 

 face, while larger steamers collect those 

 taken in the more remote localities. 



A DOUBLE DISASTER 



Notwithstanding such a combination 

 of efforts, the present total does not equal 

 the number so readily taken forty years 

 ago, with the result that the proportion- 

 ately greater expenses could not now be 

 met were it not for the extraordinary 

 number of herring taken each fall, and 

 these figures are significant : Herring, 

 1885, 300,000 pounds; 1918, 8,000,000 

 pounds, showing how this small and 

 much inferior species has exchanged 

 places with the whitefish in precisely the 

 same period. 



