WATER CULTURE COMPARED WITH LAND CULTURE. 0£5 



we have an advantage over the European nations that is precisely 

 proportionate to the relation that two bears to twenty. Here is 

 an immense point gained, for shad grow as rapidly or nearly as 

 rapidly as salmon and far more so than trout, and they are as 

 delicious a fish on the table if not quite so substantial a meal. 



Nor is this all. Salmon and trout require three months or 

 thereabouts to hatch, while shad hatch within a week. The 

 former must be carefully watched and have special appliances in 

 the matter of water and location ; the latter need no attention, 

 and hatch in a common box with a wire grating fastened over the 

 bottom. Salmon and trout are helpless for thirty days after they 

 are born, being weighed down with what is called the umbilical 

 sack, the unabsorbed portion of the egg. Shad are able to take 

 care of themselves and seek their own food the moment they burst 

 the shell. The former must be fed when young and protected 

 from their enemies for months, salmon not leaving the fresh water 

 and descending to the sea usually till a year or more after birth, 

 whereas the little shad seek the ocean as soon as they are turned 

 loose, and need no care or food till they come back grown fish 

 ready for the gridiron or the baking pan. 



To explain these differences fully, and to show also what can be 

 done even with the least prolific fish, it will be necessary to de- 

 scribe the mode of raising the young by hand as it were, for it is 

 not intended to confine ^the national operations of fish culture to 

 shad by any means, or to exclude the nobler and more valuable 

 if more troublesome salmon. There are three great classes offish 

 as viewed from the stand-point of the fish-culturist, each having 

 a different mode of laying its eggs and raising its young. First, 

 the salmon tribe, what ichthyologists call the mlmonidos, which 

 deposit their eggs in fresh cold water, digging nests for them and 

 covering them up as fast as they are impregnated by the male ; 

 secondly, the herring family, which includes the shad, another 

 migratory species, but whose eggs are left uncovered to drift in 

 comparatively still fresh water ; and, thirdly, the perch family, 

 which includes the black bass, which deposit their eggs in a mass 

 kept together by a mucous or gelatinous substance which is 

 exuded from them. The latter cannot be hatched artificially, the 

 mode of manipulating either fish or spawn not having been dis- 

 covered, and it is only with the first two classes that the fish- 

 culturist has anything to do at present, and these differ wholly in 

 15 



