NATIONAL FISHERY CONGRESS. 
259 
compost of the enormous catches of this fish off the Atlantic coast particularly. 
Admitting that the important fish, such as shad, leave the waters of the Atlantic 
rivers and are consequently safe during their absence, how can it be credited that the 
great nets full of menhaden are not very largely mixed with young food-fishes? Or, 
even if that is not so, must we not concede that menhaden, though unfit for human 
food, are in some shape the chief food for edible fishes — if not as full-grown animals, 
possibly in the form of spawn and quite young fish. It must be thus that they are 
useful, and consequently their wholesale and relatively useless destruction is a great 
wrong, which should be suspended at once by international agreement. Besides, 
there is a touch of extreme cruelty in hunting them simply for the sake of pressing 
them into the service of the farmer, for whom, indeed, they may be a cheap, but not 
altogether desirable, compost. 
There is another danger, of which the fisherman may not be conscious, and that 
is the destruction of the young of salmon, trout, and other very desirable fishes which 
have been placed in the Delaware and its tributaries, as well as in other great rivers 
near the coast. It was a known fact that the fry were deposited therein, but their 
non-appearance after reasonable time led to the belief that the enterprise was not a 
success. But recently the beautiful swimmers have been seen, having returned after 
a long absence, or else after having lingered in other streams or ocean haunts. More 
probably they went out to sea while developing into full growth, and they now return 
to spawn upon the grounds wherein they found their first home from the hatcheries. 
It is not for us to say whether they remembered their home or whether only the 
impulses of nature drove them up toward shallower waters. Suffice it that we are safe 
to claim that they belong to the society which so carefully propagated and deposited 
them or to the country for which it acts, and thus they become, as it were, wards of the 
government and subject to its protective legislation. This shows that national laws 
are absolutely requisite to their preservation from local fishing enterprises or from 
even individual fishermen. 
Further, we are assured that the many valuable food-fishes are daring wanderers, 
roaming far out to sea, while they are not impelled toward the spawning-grounds. 
Thus the herring, mackerel, or cod of British Columbia may later become the supply 
for Maine and Massachusetts. Consequently both countries interested should make 
complementary rules regarding the protection of these fisheries, having unquestionable 
legal rights in the matter. That such is truly and reasonably requisite is evident in 
the lesser quantity and smaller size of the product of these fisheries. So, too, has 
the lobster deteriorated, until a large specimen is rather the exception than the rule, 
as it used to be. To-day salmon, cod, and other fish are wonderfully abundant, but 
unless Canada joins with the United States toward making strict laws regarding the 
time of fishing, the numbers taken, and economy of sparing the young and returning 
the living but undesirable fishes to the waters, there will come disastrous days for 
the salmon canneries of the Northwest, as well as for the fisheries of the Northeast. 
Just international protection is the only mode of preventing depletion. 
Indiscriminate fishing should not be allowed at any time, and no corporation 
should use means by which great numbers of the denizens of the water may be 
captured for other purposes than to supply food to human beings. Fish laws, both 
national, State, and international, should insert warning clauses regarding wasteful 
destruction of the denizens of the sea, lake, or river. The public should be given to 
