THE SMELTS 
363 
This act of 1923 resulted in confusion and final announcements by the attorney 
general and the director of sea and shore fisheries that the law was invalid, with the 
consequence that there was unrestricted fishing in the brooks flowing into tide water. 
The foregoing “samples” of legislation and recomendations pertaining to legis- 
lation have been given and discussed to bring out the point that laws have not always 
been based upon knowledge of actual conditions; and, added to ignorance of condi- 
tions, often sectional and political interests were, and still are for that matter, principal 
considerations in the formation and enactment of laws. This fact has resulted in 
the multiplicity of laws of local application to the detriment of the general smelt 
fishery, as indicated by Donahue. 
There is no doubt but that a more or less waning smelt fishery has demanded 
and still demands conservative attention. There are evidently errors of administra- 
tion of the fisheries that need to be rectified. Laws are necessary but they should 
be based upon exact knowledge of the conditions and needs of the fishery. This is 
not all, however. If the laws are to be effective, strict compliance with and rigid 
enforcement of them are requisite corollaries. Corrective measures must be based 
upon recognized causes and aimed at them. While individual cases call for more 
stringent measures than do others, uniformity in intent of purpose is indicated. 
There are many adverse conditions affecting the fish supply, and consequently 
the fisheries, which the most well-observed or rigidly enforced laws can not wholly 
remove if any fishery at all is to be permitted, but most of them are remediable. 
Certain of such adverse conditions as may affect the fishery more or less have been 
suggested in the discussions of the fisheries and of depletion. They are not all, and 
probably all are not known. 
Forty-seven years ago the fishery inspector of New Brunswick (Venning, 1879) 
wrote that the wasteful and destructive mode in which the smelt fishery was then 
carried on called loudly for some restrictive measures. He called attention to the 
enormous waste of young smelts and other fishes that were caught with the mar- 
ketable fish, saying that he was led to believe that for every ton of marketable smelts 
exported nearly half a ton of small smelts, young bass, tomcods, and flatfish were 
wasted. He saw vast quantities of small smelts and tomcods lying on the ice and 
near the packing house, which he was informed were sold at 10 cents per barrel for 
the purpose of making compost for manure. 
After referring to the enormous waste of young smelts, the destruction of which 
he believed must have a seriously injurious effect upon the coast fisheries by materi- 
ally depriving other commercially important fishes of their food, he said that the 
mode of conducting the fishery should be restrained, and that it was a question for 
grave consideration whether the proper protection of the fisheries would not require 
the prohibition of bag nets everywhere, for no fishery could long stand so large an 
annual drain upon it. He said: 
This is no mere assertion, for we have the experience of the neighboring States in this very 
fishery, as a warning of the inevitable consequences. In Maine, Massachusetts and New York, 
where formerly the fish was almost as abundant as it is now in our waters, smelts have become 
very scarce from the same causes that are at work in this Province. These States are now depend- 
ent on our fisheries for their supply, Boston and New York furnishing the principal markets for our 
