112 



MARINE AND FISHERIES 



6-7 EDWARD VII., A. 1907 



the days of the " Mountain Miller," fifty fingerlings per rod being not unusual now 

 for a day's catch/ 



In the same magazine a writer who signs himself * Piscator ' answers the bogy 

 about the effects of pioisonous gases emitted by sawdust. ' He discourses on the 

 poisonous gases from rotting saw-dust, and I will not waste space in refuting this idea, 

 so flippantly put forth from time to time, but demand that the dead fish from such 

 causes be produced in some single river or stream in America. It cannot be done, 

 hence full-grown men should discard such transparent nonsense.' 



Another quotation. Prof. Prince, the Dominion Fish Commissioner, in his report 

 for 1899, says : — ' There is no case on record of salmon or shad or any other healthy 

 adult fish being found choked with saw-dust or in any way fatally injured by the float- 

 ing particles.' 



It is to be hoped that these quotations will convince all critics that the only way 

 to settle the question of the effects of saw-dust on fish life is that suggested by Pro- 

 fessor Prince, namely, by ' accurate and thoroughly scientific experiments.' 



In his report for 1903, Mr. Bastedo again returns to the subject. He says : — 

 'Keferring to the injurious effects of sawdust on fish life, as to which conflicting 

 opinions are expressed by fish culturists, a writer in a recent number of Forest and 

 Stream points out that one of the first difficulties which fish culturists had to overcome 

 in the artificial propagation of trout was the deleterious effects of the fungus growth 

 that always appeared in the troughs and boxes in which the eggs were hatched ,especially 

 where these were manufactured out of new lumber; and he makes the emphatic state- 

 ment that this fungus is so deadly to the eggs that if a million were to be put into 

 green lumber troughs, not a single egg mould mature. He very pertinently remarks 

 that if the exposed surface in a hatchery trough could be the primary means of such 

 deadly consequences, what a master power for injury there must be in sawdust, in 

 which form the exposed surfaces of the wood are multiplied almost indefinitely. If 

 his conclusions are well founded, the effect of throwing tons of sawdust every year 

 upon the spawning beds, or where it will float and lodge upon the spawning beds below 

 must be most disastrous. In his opinion, it is this fungus alone that destroys the 

 young fish that are exposed to it, and not that mortality occurs by the sawdust be- 

 coming fixed in the gills during inhalation, as is generally supposed. Whatever ground 

 there may be for a difference of opinion on the subject, it is well known that fish will 

 abandon streams the beds of which have become covered with this refuse.' 



The following is the letter which Mr. Bastedo has summarized in the foregoing 

 paragraph. It is regrettable that an official should try to settle the sawdust question 

 by quotations from an anonymous writer, rather than by the slow and accurate method 

 of scientific experiment. Quotations may be the only contribution which Mr. Bastedo 

 can make, but he might at least furnish the public of Ontario with quotations from 

 some more reliable source than from a nameless writer. 



SAWDUST AND FISH LIFE. 



(Extract from 'Forest and Stream/ vol. 61-2, p. 490^. 



December 19, 1903. 



Editor 'Forest and Stream,' — Eeferring to the injurious effects of sawdust on 

 fish life, will you kindly allow me to offer the following notes on the subject, from the 

 fishculturist's point of view: 



One of the first difficulties which the early trout breeders in this country had to 

 overcome, was the presence of a fungoid growth that always appeared in the wooden 

 troughs or boxes that the eggs were hatched in. It invariably grew on, and from the 

 surface of, the wood that the troughs were made of, and in all our personal experience 

 in hatching fish eggs, we never knew a single instance, east of the Mississippi, in which 

 fungus did not appear on the surface of the wooden hatching troughs very soon after 



