BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 65 



Vol. IV, ]\o. 5. Washing^ton, 1>. €. April lil, 1884. 



\ 



29.— WHAT FISH €UI.TUKE HAS FIKST TO ACCOITIPI.ISH.* 



By CHAS. ^\ SITIIL,EY. 



An impression sometimes prevails that fish culture proposes to imme- 

 diately fill all our streams with fish, to such an extent that the supply- 

 will be practically inexhaustible. In order to show that this is an ex- 

 travagant expectatiou, attention is called to the following facts. 



Any tract of country needs to be but sparsely populated in order 

 that its inhabitants may soon exhaust it of desirable food -fishes. The 

 native powers of the fish for reproduction and growth are not sufficient 

 to withstand the inroads of man, when added, to any considerable ex- 

 tent, to the natural enemies with which they are surrounded. Very 

 early in the history of the United States, its leading rivers were mostly 

 depopulated of the best fish. A hundred years ago nearly all the 

 streams of New York which emptied into the Great Lakes were visited 

 annually by salmon in such enormous quantities that their numbers 

 seem to us incredible. There are most authentic accounts which point 

 to the water being fairly alive with them in many places, when seeking 

 the upper waters of these streams for the purpose of spawning. It is 

 well know, also, that the Connecticut, Hudson, and Susquehanna Rivers 

 were at that early time visited by vast schools of shad, and the former, 

 at least, by considerable quantities of salmon. Such a population as 

 the Atlantic States contained seventy-five years ago was sufficient to 

 exhaust these rivers of the more valuable food-fishes, and before arti- 

 ficial fish culture was undertaken many streams had remained in this 

 exhausted condition for a considerable length of time. 



The first and great task of fish culture, therefore, is not so much to 

 increase the number of edible fishes in any given stream as to withstand 

 the enormous forces which are at work to produce their entire annihila- 

 tion. As illustrative of this the presence of shad in the Potomac River 

 may be cited. For some years prior to the war of 186L-'U5 the shad 

 fisheries of the Potomac had been practically exhausted. They had 

 reached so low a limit that it was very unprofitable to fish the stream, 

 and its barrenness helped to deter men from fishing; but the occupa- 

 tion of the banks of the river by hostile forces for the i)eriod of nearly four 

 years made fishing practically impossible and gave nature an opportu- 

 nity to restore the fisheries. As a consequence, at the close of the war 

 it was found that the river had been restocked to such an extent that 

 the yield for a few years was very large indeed. The presence of large 



*A paper read before the Biological Society of Waskingtou D, C, March 8, 1884. 

 Bull. U. S. F. C, 84 5 



