e world are upon Chesapeake Bay.
There are also oyster farms in other bays upon the Atlantic seaboard,
and lately the oyster has been transplanted to the bays upon the Pacific
Coast.

The lobster was trapped so industriously that it also began to grow
scarce. Finally the government took up the matter of protecting it. The
eggs and the young were guarded, and now it is increasing in numbers.

Once the sturgeon was very plentiful in the lakes and rivers of our
country. For a long time it was thought to be of no value and was thrown
away when caught in nets set for other fish. Then it was discovered that
its flesh was delicious, and its eggs, known as _caviar_, became a very
fashionable dish. After this there followed a period of most destructive
fishing, and now sturgeon are quite scarce and high priced.

Herring, shad, and salmon are migratory fish. By this we mean that they
spend a part of their lives in the ocean but enter the bays and streams
at the spawning season. You can readily understand that if the bays are
blocked with nets the fish cannot reach the spawning grounds and their
numbers must decrease. Chesapeake Bay contains such a maze of nets, many
of them extending out ten miles from the shore, that it is a wonder
that any fish get past them.

[Illustration: _H. W. Fairbanks_
A fish wheel on the Columbia River, in which salmon are caught on their
way to the spawning grounds.]

The waters of New England were once filled with striped bass, smelt,
salmon, and shad, but now these fish are almost gone. The shad are
rapidly decreasing all along the Atlantic Coast. The nets in Lake Erie
extend out sometimes ten miles from shore, and the whitefish as well as
the sturgeon have been greatly reduced in numbers there.

When the Pacific Coast was first settled, the "salmon run" in the
Sacramento, Columbia, and other rivers was a wonderful sight. The waters
were fairly alive with these huge fish. Hydraulic mining so muddied the
waters of the Sacramento that their numbers greatly decreased. Then came
the fishermen and stretched their nets across the rivers, so nearly
blocking the channels that the salmon were rarely seen on their old
spawning grounds. Now salmon fishing is carefully regulated and salmon
are increasing.

The shallow waters of San Francisco Bay, the ocean for some miles out
from shore, and the waters about the islands of Southern California form
very valuable fishing grounds, which, if they are ta