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National Geographic : 1920 Apr
Contents
WHEN THE FATHER OF WATERS GOES ON A RAMPAGE An Account of the Salvaging of Food-fishes from the Overflowed Lands of the Mississippi River BY HUGH M. SMITH UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES Photographs from the Bureau of Fisheries ONE of the most important of the varied functions of the United States Bureau of Fisheries is a mighty effort to undo one of Nature's apparent blunders and mitigate the dam age done annually to the prospective food supply of the country by a cataclysm in volving untold millions of the best fishes in the Mississippi River and its tribu taries. This effort, yielding large practical re sults and coming at a period when there is most urgent demand for the preven tion of waste and the maintenance of re sources, must be rated as of great public importance and as worthy of general recognition and support. The Father of Waters is a serious 'offender against the host of food and game fishes which populate its turbulent course, and exhibits marked disregard for the welfare of the entire fish tribe. Every year, and several times a year, it overflows its banks, wanders far from its proper haunts, and then subsides, leaving behind temporary pools, ponds. and lakes in which are myriads of young fishes whose destruction is inevitable unless human agency comes to their aid. Inas much as these fishes represent a large part of the future adult supply of all the leading species, their rescue and return to the main stream is a matter of the utmost importance. For many years there has been a reali zation of this stupendous annual waste of food-fishes, and steps have been taken to repair some of that waste. It was only recently, however, that the efforts bore an adequate ratio to the magnitude of the task, and it was not until I919 that the operations assumed a scope and yielded results that could be regarded as fairly commensurate with the need. The annual freshet in the Mississippi River of greatest importance to the fish eries is the one known as the "June rise," which usually occurs about the time when most of the river fishes are ready to spawn. It is somewhat later than the freshet caused by the melting snows, but is usually of equal volume and represents surplus rainfall that is seeking a south ern outlet. PREHISTORIC GLACIERS CUT A WIDE VALLEY In prehistoric times great glaciers, moving down from the north, seem to have cut a wide, deep valley through the upper reaches of the river, and through this passage frequent floods have for ages brought down and deposited silt and drift in such quantities that the main channel has been crowded from the cen ter toward one of the precipitous banks on either side, while the remainder of what formerly constituted the river bed is now a low table-land, with a gradual ascent toward the hills. It would appear that at one time the main river flowed unhindered through what is now wooded, lake-covered terri tory, and that great drifts gradually formed and divided the old bed into land locked ponds, many parts of it with the lapse of time becoming so completely filled in as to provide secure anchorage for trees and other vegetation. As the river rises it first submerges the adjacent lowlands, making ponds and lakes on the nearest levels; with its con tinued rise, lakes are formed at higher levels, and so on until the flood stage has
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