760 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



Mr. Brackett said tbat if we had a tliousand times as niucii as we 

 now have, it would not be too much. Putting a few eggs in a stream 

 amounts to nothing; they ought to be put in by millions. 



Professor Baird. What States have provision for receiving this spawn 

 and hatching it out ? 



Mr. Brackett mentioned Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hamp- 

 shire as prepared to receive the eggs. 



Mr. Fletcher said his State could dispose of 100,000. 



Mr. Brackett said that Dr. Fletcher was to place about 15,000 sal- 

 mon-eggs in the headwaters of the Merrimack. He thought that seven 

 or eight thousand had been placed there previously. Three small rivers 

 in Massachusetts had received from one to three thousand, and this 

 season, for the first time, the market has been teeming with salmon, 

 weighing from two to three pounds, caught in weirs in Massachusetts 

 Bay. In the town of Plymouth, the fishermen who sell fish from house 

 to house carry around these small salmon. It is reasonable to suppose 

 that these fish are the result of what has been done in stocking the 

 rivers of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. There ought to be some 

 law making it a penal offense to have these small salmon in one's 

 Xjossession. Unless possession of the fish be made a crime, the catching 

 of them could not be prevented. None should be sold weighing less 

 than four or five pounds. 



Professor Baird stated that there was such a law in Nova Scotia. 



Mr. Reed said Rhode Island would be prepared very soon to place 

 shad in two or three of the streams of that State. They had already 

 hatched about 30,000 trout and 10,000 salmon, having obtained the 

 spawn in Canada. 



The question was then raised whether the salmon from Mr. Wilmot's 

 establishment were the landlocked salmon; and it was concluded that 

 it was of little consequence whether they were or not if they were equally 

 good with the sea-salmon. 



Dr. Slack had had the true salmon and the land-locked, and could not 

 tell which was which. 



Mr. Stone said that the land-locked salmon when a year old has a 

 black spot on the dorsal fin, which is not upon the true salmon. 



Mr. Brackett said that some land-locked salmon would reach a 

 weight of 17 pounds. 



Mr. Fletcher said they would average 10 pounds. 



Mr. Brackett had seen one at the head of Sebago River that weighed 

 ITf pounds. 



Professor Baird inquired as to the propriety of attempting to introduce 

 the land-locked salmon into the upper lakes. He thought that a good 

 deal should be done in the way of experiments in the western waters, 

 the Mississippi Valley, and the lake-regions, to stock them with shad 

 or salmon. 



