Page 351 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

BENEFICIAL INTRODUCED SPECIES 329
ended in total failure. The quail could not survive in tneir strange environinent. I cannot recall a single instance in which restocking northern covers with southern quail has been a success.
These is no royal road to the restoration of an exterminated bird species. Where the native seed still exists, by long labor and travail, thorough protection and a mighty long close season, it can be encouraged to breed back and return; but it is an evolution that can not be hurried in the least. Protect Nature, and leave the rest to her.
Withmammals,thecaseisdifferent. Itispossibletorestockdepleted areas,providedTimeisrecognizedasadominantfactor. Icancitetwo interesting cases by way of illustration, but this subject will form an- other chapter.
In the transplantation of fishes, conditions are widely different, and many notable successes have been achieved.
One of the greatest hits ever made by the United States Bureau of Fisheries in the planting of fish in new locahties was the introduction of the striped bass or rock-fish {RoccHS lineatus) of our Atlantic coast, into the coast waters of California. In 1879, 135 live fish were deposited in Karquines Strait, at Martinez, and in 1882, 300 more were planted in Suisun Bay, near the first locality chosen.
Twelve years after the first planting in San Francisco Bay, the markets of San Fran- cisco handled 149,997 pounds of striped bass. At that time the average weight for a wholeyearwaselevenpounds,andtheaveragepricewastencentsperpound. Fish weighing as high as forty-nine pounds have been taken, and there are reasons for the belief that eventually the fish of California will attain as great weight as those of the Atlantic and the Gulf.
The San Franisco markets now sell, annually, about one and one half million pounds ofstripedbass. Thisfishhastakenitsplaceamonganglersasoneofthegamefishes oftheCaliforniacoast,andaffordsfinesport. Strangetosay,however,ithasnotyet spread beyond the shores of California.
Regarding this species, the records of the United States Bureau of Fisheries are of interest. In1897,theCaliforniamarketshandled2,949,642pounds,worth$225,527.—
(American Natural History.)
Nowhere else in the world, we venture to say, were such extensive, costly and persistent efforts put forth in the transplantation of any wild foreign species as the old U. S. Fish Commission, under Prof. Spencer F. Baird, put forth in the introduction of the German carp into the fresh water ponds, lakes and rivers of the United States. It was held that because the carp could live and thrive in waters bottomed with mud, that species would be a boon to all inland regions where bodies of water, orstreams,werescarceanddear. Althoughthecarpisnotthebestfish in the world for the table, it seemed that the dwellers in the prairie and great plains regions would find it far better than bullheads, or no fish at all,—which are about the same thing.
By means of special fish cars, sent literally all over the United States, at a great total expense, live carp, hatched in the ponds near the Wash- ingtonMonumentweredistributedtoallapplicants. TheGermancarp spread far and wide; but to-day I think the fish has about as many enemies as friends. In some places, strong objections have been filed to the manner in which carp stir up the mud at the bottom of ponds and small lakes, greatly to the detriment of all the native fishes found therein.