THE HISTORY OF FISH CULTURE. 545 



The progress in the history of fish-caltare iu the Uuited States 

 re&ultiug from its application to the shad may be summed up as — 



(1.) The foundation of a hatching-establishment by a State. Though a 

 permanent building or even location is not an accessory of shad-hatching, 

 still, the ownership of apparatus and the continuance of its use from 

 year tc year in the waters of a State are very properly to be considered 

 as the founding of a hatching-establishment, and in this Massachusetts 

 took the lead in 1867. 



(2.) The shad-box invented by Seth Green was an advance of very 

 great consequence, not only because it made it possible to increase the 

 shad, its most important result thus far; but because it is adapted to, 

 and in fact suggested the possibility of hatching the striped bass, and it 

 was also found by Mr. Stone to be quite convenient in bringing forward 

 the eggs of the California salmon when his hatching-house was found to 

 be filled and plenty of eggs still to be obtained. 



(3.) In the fact that young shad are delicate and with difficulty kept 

 alive during transportation, the large amount of experience that has 

 been brought to bear in their extensive distribution has led to improve- 

 ment in method and in a more explicit knowledge of the needs and 

 requirements of young fishes during transportation. 



The tchitejish. — In November of 1857 Mr. Carl Muller, of New York, 

 and Mr. Henry Brown, of New Haven, (see page 534,) having received 

 from the State of Connecticut certain protective interests in Saltonstall 

 Lake, near the city of New Haven, began a system of operations for 

 stocking it with fishes, and the wall-eyed pike of the Ohio, the salmon- 

 trout, and the white-fish of Lake Ontario were all transferred to the 

 waters of the lake by means of eggs procured and impregnated artificially. 



The account of the operation indicates a rather crude knowledge and 

 method in the art of fish-culture, and it is probable that why a small pro- 

 portion of eggs was hatched. The estimates of the number of eggs are 

 very large. They were packed iu moist sand and placed in the bed of 

 the stream on their arrival, the white-fish eggs on a sandy shoal of less 

 than three feet depth. The presence of young fish in great numbers in 

 the following March and April was believed to result from the eggs, 

 though the exceedingly common error on the great lakes of mistaking 

 the schools of small cyprinoids for young white fish, which they very 

 much resemble, except in the absence of the adij)ose dorsal, may have 

 been repeated here. 



In the fall of 1858 the experiment was renewed. There has been no 

 reference made to any permanent results from this experiment in 

 the reports of the State commissioners. 



A more successful series of tests were begun in 1868 by Seth Green 



and Samuel Wilmot in applying artificial culture to this species, and iu 



the succeeding year by Mr. N. W. Clark, of' Clarkston, Mich. They 



were found to be very delicate and difficult to hatch iu the first few 



S. Mis. 74 35 



