236 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADExMY OP 



On the Introduction of the American SHAD into the Alabama Eiver. 



BY W. C. DANIELL, M. D., OF SAVANNAH, GEO. 



(Communicated through the Smithsonian Institution.) 



My success in establishing the White Shad in the Alabama River being now 

 complete, I propose to give jou a detailed statement of the matter. 



Having long doubted the generally received theory of the annual migration 

 south from the uorthern seas, of the White Shad, and of the consequent annual 

 migration thither of the young fry hatched from the eggs deposited by their 

 parents in our fresh water streams, I made inquiry of our fishermen, and learned 

 that minute but distinctive differences were readily detected between the 

 White Shad taken in the Savannah River and those taken in the Ogeechee 

 River, eighteen miles south of the Savannah River. Fully satisfied of this fact, 

 I readily concluded that the young shad that descend to the sea never go so 

 far from the mouth of the river descended, as to lose their connection with it, 

 and that they ascend iu the spring the same river which they had descended as 

 young fish the previous summer. Then the feeding ground, so to speak, of the 

 shad is iu or near the mouth of the river. If the. young shad does attain its 

 growth at the mouth of the Savannah and of the Ogeechee Rivers, may there 

 not be equally good feeding-grounds at the mouihs of the Alabama and other 

 rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico? To solve this question, I, wiih the aid 

 of my friend Mark A. Cooper, Esq , whose residence on the Etowah River in 

 Barton County supplied an eligible locality for the experiment, in the early 

 summer of 1848 had placed in a small tributary of the Etowah River the fe- 

 cundated eggs of the White Shad, which I had myself carefully prepared at 

 my plantation on the Savannah River, ten miles above this city, from living 

 parents. These eggs, so deposited by Major Cooper, were daily visited by him 

 until they had all hatched. I sent another supply of fecundated eggs to Dan'l. 

 Pratt, Esq., at Prattsville, near Montgomery, Ala., in 1853 or '54, as he writes 

 me, which he deposited in a small creek. Inasmuch as he left home soon after, 

 and was absent " some weeks," he can only report that during that absence 

 heavy rains raised the waters in the creek, and washed away the " pen " in 

 which he had placed the White Shad eggs supplied by me. Nothing can 

 therefore be safely affirmed of the success of this second deposit, nor is it im- 

 portant, as in 1851 or '52 the White Shad had already been taken in the fish- 

 traps at the foot of the Falls of the Alabama, at Wiiumka, and of the Black 

 Warrior, near Tuscaloosa, though unknown to me at the time of supplying 

 Mr. Pratt with the fecundated eggs. 



Through the kindness of a friend at Montgomery, Ala., a shad taken from 

 the Alabama River was sect to Prof. Holbrook, of Charleston, S. C, and he 

 wrote me that he " felt certain " that the fish received and examined by bim 

 was identical with the White Shad of our Atlantic rivers. I have a letter from 

 Chas. T. Pollard, Esq., of Montgomery, Ala., of 6th inst., in which, speaking of 

 the White Shad in the Alabama River, he says: "They have gradually in- 

 creased in quantity since they first appeared, and have year by year increased 

 in size, until, to use the words of a native of South Carolina, who lived many 

 years near Sistera Ferry, on the Savannah River, they are now equal to the 

 best Savannah River Shad." 



The White Shad have chiefly been taken in the fish-traps at the foot of the 

 Falls atWetumpka and near Tuscaloosa. One, I am informed, has been taken 

 from a trap at the head of the Coosa River, near Rome, in tbis State, and only 

 some sixty miles below the locality in which the eggs were deposited by Major 

 Cooper, in a tributary of the Etowah River. I also learn that some few have 

 been taken with a dip net, near Selma. 



I think that we may safely conclude that the White Shad may be as success- 

 fully established in the Mississippi River as it has been in the Alabama. Since 



[May, 



