144 BULLETIN OP^ THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



yO— AC€liIMATIZATfOiV OF SALinO QUirVIVAT IIV FRANCE. 

 By Dr. MASL,IEURAT-L,AOEMARI>. 



[From a letter to Eaveret-Wattel, Secretary of the National Acclimatization Society.] 



In the month of IsTovember, 1879, you sent me a box containing eggs 

 of the Salnio quinnat. One hundred of the fry, well formed, after hav- 

 ing remained five or six weeks under the ice, owing to continued frosts, 

 were, in favorable weather, placed in the river Gartempe. Did these 

 little fish survive, and would they find their way up here? I am happy 

 to say that I can answer both these questions in the afiBrmative. 



Yesterday I caught one of these salmon, which was three years old 

 last spring. Its lean condition showed j)lainly that it had spawned in 

 the river; and it must be presumed that it was not the only one.» It 

 weighs 1 kilogram. In summer, when it had its full weight, it must 

 have weighed 3 or 4 pounds. I have no doubt that it was one of those 

 wliich we had i)laced in the river in 1880. These salmon, which are ex- 

 ceedingly valuable on account of their fecundity and their rapid growth, 

 have therefore been acclimatized in our rivers; and this result ought 

 to encourage the efforts of your society. 



Grand Boueg, December 17, 1883. 



71.— NOTES OF A TKII» IIV THE OUI.F OF MEXICO. 

 By BAKMET PHILLIPS. 



[From a letter to Prof. S. F. Baird.] 



Further south we found swarms of mullet (cf. p. 135), and on several 

 occasions killed enough for table use by shooting a charge of fiue shot 

 into the schools. I have some idea that mullet oil might be a useful 

 product if proper plants were put up. I left an order to have some 

 smoked mullet sent me ; such roes as I ate on the coast were badly put 

 up and hardly edible. In a fishery sense, the west coast of Florida is 

 not developed at all. 



What struck me as remarkable was to see the shoals of porpoises 

 sailing in very shallow water, just enough to float them, and feeding on 

 the fish which swarm there. The feature of all the bays and creeks is 

 that they are shallow. The struggle for life must be continuous. In 

 some of the fresh water creeks, as those on the Caloosahatchee, we took 

 a number of large water turtles, the biggest about 12 pounds. What 

 was strange about them was that fully 75 per cent, of them had lost a 

 foot or a leg, evidently taken off by a gar or an alligator. I wrote 

 something about the sheeps-head being considered unwholesome at cer- 

 tain seasons, but this would require further investigation. At Punta 

 Bassa a 6-pound sheeps-head is used to bait a hook for shark, 



Times Office, New York, Fehruary 21, 1884. 



