THE IMPORTANCE OF EXTENDED SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION. 
By H. C. BUMPUS, Ph. D., 
Professor of Comparative Anatomy, Brown University. 
We meet here as members of a government that within less than three decades 
has not only revolutionized the methods of fish-culture, but has preserved to its 
several States, inland as well as seaboard, an industry yielding an annual income of 
over $45,000,000; a government which now maintains for the propagation of its fishes 
a fleet of steam and sailing vessels, more than a score of liberally equipped hatching 
and breeding stations, and which gratuitously issues to those unable to inspect its 
work a series of publications of great value to practical fishermen, of vast importance 
to the fish-culturist, and of sterling worth to the scientific world. The names of Baird, 
Terrill, Goode, and Ryder are familiar in every college and university, and their well- 
worn publications are conspicuous in biological laboratories from Italy to Scandinavia, 
and from Liverpool to Tokyo. Abstracts from reports of the United States Fish Com- 
mission form a considerable proportion of the last annual of the British laboratory at 
Plymouth, England, and other governments have frequently sent .commissioners to 
inspect our hatcheries and acquaint themselves with American methods of work. 
We should be careful, however, lest the consciousness of a successful past act as 
a sedative for the present. The lines of research wisely indicated by the founders, I 
might rather say founder, of American fish-culture should be assiduously followed, 
and the bypaths explored. The excellent reports of the one lately in charge of the 
Division of Fishery Methods and Statistics of the Commission — the secretary of this 
Congress— give an annual guarantee of the work actually accomplished and prove 
beyond perad venture that the Commission is not only self-supporting, but that the 
fisheries under its assistance are of rapidly increasing importance. 
The introduction of the shad into the Pacific has yielded an average income of 
approximately $20,000, and the shad industry of the Atlantic, an industry yielding 
$2,000,000 annually, owes its continuance, if not also its existence, to the efforts of 
the United States Fish Commission. The planting of cod fry upon the coast of New 
England has replenished the waters of the east, and it is a fact that the fish were so 
plentiful in Narragansett Bay during the past autumn that nets could not be drawn, 
and the neighboring markets became overstocked. 
The intelligent propagation of the cod rests upon the scientific work of Professor 
Ryder. Successful shad raising is largely due to the researches and devices of Com- 
missioner McDonald. The life-history of the oyster was practically unknown until 
worked out by Professor Brooks. The migrations of the menhaden were unexplained 
before the researches of Dr. Peck. The work of Professor Libbey bears directly upon 
the question of distribution of the mackerel, and I venture to predict that successful 
177 
F. C. B. 1897—12 
