XVII -THE PROPAGATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE SHAD. 



A— OPERATIONS IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF SHAD IN 1874. 



By James W. Milxer. 

 DISTRIBUTION FROM COEYMANS, N. T. 



The work of shad-distribution began the last week of June; the 

 delay in the control of available funds preventing any possibility of 

 propagation in the Potomac or rivers to the southward. 



The services of experts were obtained at once for the season, and four 

 traveling parties organized at Coeymans, N. T., the station of the New 

 York State commissioners. 



The first shipment was made from this point on the 24th of June. 

 Between this date and July 9, seven shipments were made to streams in 

 the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Texas. In all four hundred 

 thousand shad were placed in tributaries of the great lakes, the Missis- 

 sippi, and in the Brazos and Colorado Rivers of Texas. 



DISTRIBUTION FROM SOUTH HADLEY FALLS, MASS. 



The work of the New York commissioners ceased about the 3d of 

 July, and the traveling parties moved to South Hadley Falls, Mass., 

 the station of the Connecticut commissioners. Mr. Monroe A. Green 

 had the direction of the work at its commencement here and during my 

 absence of a fortnight in Texas and elsewhere. 



Part of the plan at this station was to move a portion of the shad into 

 the Connecticut above the fish-way. The generally accepted fact in the 

 habits of anadromous fishes that they are disposed to return to almost 

 the exact locality where they passed their embryonic and earlier stages 

 of growth indicated a necessity for establishing a colony above the 

 Holyoke dam. 



There is a large amount of evidence to establish the fact of this habit 

 in the salmon and alewife, and many fresh-water fishes seem to have 

 as strong an instinct for locality as have the birds and mammals. It 

 is tolerably evident that the shad possesses the same disposition to find 

 its way back to familiar waters. 



Observation of the shad brought to the large markets shows consid- 

 erable difference in the physiognomy and general contour of those from 

 different rivers. The. suggestion is natural that* they are distinct and 

 separate colonies of the same species, and thus slight characteristics are 

 perpetuated because they breed in-and-in and do not mix with those of 



