INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 21 



ernments rather to legislate for the extinction than the 

 protection and continuance of the finer species of migratory 

 fishes. Individuals have been allowed, and companies have 

 been chartered, to construct impassable dams, driving back 

 salmon and shad from their spawning-beds; and not only 

 above, but below such barriers most of our rivers have 

 become as barren of such fish as if they had never resorted 

 to them. These are not the natural consequences of civil- 

 ization and progress, as some would urge, but rather of bar- 

 barism and reckless improvidence ; and at last, when a shad 

 or a pound of salmon is sold for twenty times the price it 

 brought when we ceased to be colonies of Great Britain, 

 our legislators have set seriously to work to regain for us 

 the liberal provisions of nature which they have thrown 

 away. 



Our separate interests as states, it is to be feared, will 

 defer or prevent the restoration of many rivers to their for- 

 mer fruitfulness, as many of them form the boundaries 

 between, or flow through, several states. The New England 

 States, notwithstanding, have at length set to work with a 

 will, and, from all we can gather from the reports of their 

 fish commissioners, there is much good feeling and concert 

 of action. The joint commission have defined the part to 

 be taken by each state. Those to whose territory the 

 spawning-beds of the long rivers are confined, have agreed 

 to stock them with shad and salmon, and are using the 

 fecundated spawn of these fish to do it the more speedily. 

 The enormous number of forty millions of young shad were 

 hatched out by Seth Green at Holyoke on the Connecticut 



