370 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER "OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



As I tbiuk I told you, from earliest spring till late iu the summer 

 there were always (more formerly than now) weirs up and down the 

 river from just below my house to the falls, in which salmon, alewives, 

 lierring, frostfish, smelts, sturgeons, &c., were caught, as well as a few 

 nice but unmistakable trout; but iu all this period I never knew of 

 but two young salmon, children, to be caught. These were caught in 

 one tide in one weir down the bay, some fifteen or twenty years ago, and 

 we had them cooked, and ate them. 



Of course, if two have been caught, others may, and probably have 

 been; but in that time hundreds of shad, and bass, and mackerel have 

 strayed away from their fellows, and been caught also ; so that it is hard 

 to regard the coming of these young salmon as otherwise than excep- 

 tional in this little river. In large rivers, where there is more to eat, it 

 may be different. 



In late years, now that there are legions of little boys fishing iu the 

 fall of the year in the pond at the mills, it is reported that they have 

 occasionally drawn out, with the chubs and trout, a very small specimen 

 of a salmon, about as long as a smelt or a very small trout ; and I ])re- 

 sume that always, when the gates of the water-wheels were shut down, 

 and little alewives were stranded in the puddles underneath, that sal- 

 mon-fry were with them. The men. sawing would have expected nothing 

 less ; and it would probably have been only the uniform absence of 

 salmon-fry that would have excited any attention or remark. This is 

 the way it seems to me. Of late years, the number offish has been too 

 small to give much of a chance of stranding a little one, even if the 

 old rocky puddles had been left in condition. 



More than this, it does not seem probable that a year-old fish would 

 ever trust himself up the river, unless he were a candidate for starvation. 

 There are flies enough to support a few chubs and trout, and that seems 

 to be all. The salmon and alewives seem to deteriorate rapidly in con- 

 dition with every step they take from the sea to the highest point they 

 reach. Those taken much above the mills we think of little account. 

 Coming iu from the sea, at the mouths of the bays, salmon are occasion- 

 ally caught with a codfish-hook and a piece of pork, perhaps, and when 

 they are leaving the river, black, and eel-shaped, and ravenous, they 

 have been caught in that way also; but between these two periods, they 

 seem to subsist upon and consume their own substance laid up at sea, 

 together with what few insects they pick up. The young of the ale- 

 wives are grown in the large shoal lakes, where there seems to be some 

 little chance of subsistence for a small fish, while the salmon is confined 

 to the little stream itself, with its scanty supply of food. 



I hope I have not tired you with these details, which possibly you 

 understand' very much better than I. 

 Yours, truly, 



THOMAS Lli^COLN. 



Professor S. F, Baird. 



