234 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



remain till they hatch, the period varying according to the heat of 

 the water from two days to seven. Nothing can be simpler than 

 all this, and though, like everything else, it requires a little prac- 

 tice, the roughest and most ignorant man can soon acquire the 

 requisite knowlede to manage the establishment. 



The great results which are promised by this enterprise are 

 not mere matters of guess work ; salmon have been cultivated 

 abroad so as to restock abundantly many streams which had been 

 entirely depleted, and here the consequences of shad culture have 

 proved themselves to be exactly what it was predicted they would 

 be. The same fall that the first experiments were made in the 

 Connecticut, shad fry were noticed as being unusually abundant 

 in the lower part of that river, more so than they had been 

 known to be within the memory of the inhabitant's. Three years 

 later they returned — they were not expected sooner, such being 

 their habit — and in numbers surpassing anything that the fisher- 

 men ^iad experienced in years. At first this was supposed to be 

 only an accident, and was explained by the unbelievers upon 

 various theories, and these asked a suspension of judgment until 

 the next year. But all theories in. opposition were put to rout 

 next season when the fishing was actually unprecedented, being 

 better than had been known in fifty years. So decided was the 

 effect of this improvement that the price of shad fell in the north- 

 ern markets to less than one third of what it had been previously. 

 And I will in this connection again quote from the report of the 

 New York commissioners : 



"Shad were far more abundant and far cheaper than they had 

 been for years, both on the Connecticut and the Hudson ; ially 



so on the former river, the yield from which actually glutted the 

 markets and reduced the wholesale price from eighteen dollars a 

 hundred down to three. This was manifestly the consequence of 

 the previous efforts, and confirmed the predictions of those who 

 had studied the habits of the fish. It was expected that the great 

 body of such as were hatched would return in three or four years 

 full grown ; and it was exactly four years previous that Mr. Seth 

 Gr*een, under the auspices of the New England commissioners, 

 had first discovered the method of hatching shad, and had placed 

 many millions of 3 r oung fry in the Connecticut. 



" Most of these returned to the river where they were born. 

 The effect on the market, however, was mainly attributable to the 

 yield of that river, which supplied New York and other adjacent 

 cities so abundantly as seriously to reduce the profits of the fisher- 

 men on the Eudson. It, is perfectly plain, from these results, that 

 unless we keep pace in this matter with our eastern neighbors, 



