8 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



ions of young fish will be furnished for the Haff every year from the 

 safe spawning ponds, and make up for any losses. Success will surely 

 crown these efforts at last, and our waters will again be filled with fish. 

 A successful experiment, like the one we have described, will soon be 

 imitated in other parts of our country, and our lakes and rivers will 

 no longer, as at the present time, when our freshwater fisheries have 

 reached the lowest stajje of their decline, only yield an average annual 

 increase of 2 marks (47 cents) per hectare; but will equal in productive- 

 ness the finest and best cultivated portion of our land, and the income 

 from each hectare of water will be at least twenty times as large as the 

 one mentioned above. Whenever this takes place, our pisciculturists, 

 and among them Mr. von dem Borne, with his GOO acres of water, will 

 be the first to feel the consequences of the change, for fish will become 

 much cheaper, and the fishing-waters will yield less income, in propor- 

 tion as the condition of the lower classes of our population is improved 

 by cheaper food. But this disinterested man, who has conceived the 

 vast plan of stocking the Haff with carp, will not be influenced by such 

 narrow considerations. The execution of this plan will prove a great 

 blessing to our people, for we shall again see the carp, which has been 

 banished from all tables except those of the rich on account of its high 

 price, grace the table of our middle and poorer classes. 



APPEARlNtE OF DOGFISH (SQFAEFS ACANTHIAS) ON THE NEW 



ENOI,AND COAST IN WINTER. 



By J. W. COLLINS. 



(Letter to Prof. S. F. Baird.) 



In the Cape Ann Advertiser of February 10, 1882, I find the follow- 

 ing paragraph: "Immense schools of dogfish, extending as far as the 

 eye can reach, have appeared off Portsmouth, an unusual sight in win- 

 ter." Is it not possible that the presence of dogfish in such abundance 

 in that vicinity this winter may have something to do with the scarcity 

 of the cod in Ipswich Bay ? 



It is a fact well known to fishermen that dogfish in summer will drive 

 the various species of bottom fish from the grounds, and it may be that 

 they are quite as voracious and troublesome to the cod in winter as in 

 warmer weather. 



Smithsonian Institution, 



Washington, D. C, February 18, 1882. 



