GENERAL MEETINGS. 
tlie tail of one and then another, destroying ten times as many fish 
as they really need for food, and leaving in their track the stirface 
of the water covered with the blood and fragments of the mangled 
fish.” Fortunately this fish is itself valuable for food, and it is ac¬ 
cordingly taken in large numbers.* 
But by far the most rapacious and destructive scourge of the 
waters is man himself. By reckless extravagance in his methods of 
capture he would soon consume the capital of his abundant patri¬ 
mony were no restraints imposed upon the thoughtless improvidence 
of his greed. With the growth of population and demand and the 
improved facilities for rapid transportation, the stimulus to inventive 
ingenuity occasioned the establishing of fish-traps and fish-pounds 
on a large scale that gathered thousands in their confines, with little 
regard to the probable supply of the future. As these traps and 
pounds were placed directly in the way of the fish to their spawn¬ 
ing beds, it resulted that a very large proportion of spawn fishes 
were taken by them, thus greatly reducing the prospects of the suc¬ 
ceeding generation. 
Whatever protective measures might be deemed expedient to 
check this spendthrift waste, it was seen that the most immediate 
and promising work of the Commissioner would be to promote the 
rapid multiplication of fish ; and to this dominant interest the an¬ 
nual appropriations by Congress have been more and more largely 
directed. 
Pisciculture is by no means a recent art, it having been exten¬ 
sively practiced by the Chinese for a number of centuries; and even 
the artificial fecundation of fish-spawn is nearly a century and a 
third old, having been apparently first introduced by Jacobi, a 
German, of Westphalia. Most of the European nations had already' 
given attention to the practical application of fish-culture, and in 
different parts of our own country enterprising individuals had un¬ 
dertaken the operation with gratifying results. 
Under the organizing direction of Professor Baird a careful study 
was made of existing methods, extended experiments on artificial 
propagation were conducted, and successive improvements in the 
various stages of incubation, hatching, and development intro- 
*In his first report, Professor Baird says: “I am myself cognizant of the 
capture of no less than 20,000 bluefish, representing a weight of at least one 
hundred thousand pounds, in one weir in the course of a single night.” 
