When sturgeon were more plentiful than now, they were caught for the oil, that has been esteemed equal to the best sperm. The leap of the sturgeon, immortalised by Drake in TJic Culprit Fay, was a frequent sight a generation ago, and it was worth a day's journey to see that quivering bulk ])ierce the surface, a living projectile, and, descril)ing a parabola of eight or ten feet, fling a rainbow arch of spra)^ into the sunlight. The herring have also frequented the waters of the Hudson at intervals, and perch, white-fish, snappers (young bluefish), and a multitude of the smaller fry, are familiar to every American boy who is in training for the Presidency. Within the past fifteen years the Fish Commissioners have put thousands of salmon and other fry in the river, and occasionally fine specimens of varieties thus introduced have been taken, while it is expected that the future will more than justify the outlay, but in general it is acknowledged that this great volume of water flowing seaward with slow gradations from the freshness of a mountain stream to the saltness of the

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ocean is no longer a fisherman's river. One can hardly believe that the schools of fish have been depleted by the industry of the fisheiTnen. By the ordinary process of multiplication, if unchecked by other untoward influences, the supply of fish in such a river must ahva}'s be in excess of the number caught with hook and line. But there are other pernicious influences, among them the pollution which results from sewage in the vicinity of large towns. There can be little doubt that fish are poisoned by the fouling of the element in which they live. It may be too that the constant accretion of cinders and ashes upon the bed of the channels has ]3revented the development of those forms of life upon which the fish depend for food.