REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 75 



General Walker's request, I undertook the work of organizing that 

 department, and of employing all the machinery of the United States 

 Fish Commission in its behalf. 



Mr. G. Brown Goode, the curator of the National Museum, was assigned 

 to the special work of direction, and with the assistance of the regular 

 force of the commission and persons especially employed at the expense 

 of the census appropriation, a systematic plan of operations was laid 

 out and is now being carried into effect. Experienced and trained 

 observers have been sent to diiferent portions of the coast as canvassers 

 atfi investigators, it being the intention that every fishing village on 

 the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf, and Great Lake coasts shall be properly 

 canvassed. Numerous circulars have been sent out to the interior, ask- 

 ing for information. 



For the purpose of better supervising the collation of data and the 

 tabulation of results, accommodations have been furnished in the east 

 wing of the Smithsonian budding, where the parties have been at work, 

 under the direction of Mr. Goode. Mr. Charles W. Smiley is in charge 

 of 'the office, with a number of clerks detailed by General Walker for 

 his assistance. The principal canvassers at work in the field are Mr. 

 E. E. Earll, for the New England coast generally; Mr. Charles G. Atkins, 

 having special charge of the statistics of the salmon, herring, alewife, 

 and smelt fisheries in Maine; Mr. Silas Stearns, assisted by Mr. S. T. 

 Walker, for tbe Gulf of Mexico ; Col. Marshall McDonald, for the shad 

 fisheries of Virginia and the southern coast ; Mr. R. T. Edmunds, the 

 oyster and fresh fish trade of the Chesapeake Bay and Baltimore; Mr. 

 B. Phillips, for the fish manufacturing industry of New York; Mr. L. 

 Kumlien, for the fisheries of the Great Lakes ; and Prof. D. S. Jordan, 

 for the fisheries of the Pacific Coast. In addition to these, Mr. Ernest 

 Ingersoll has general charge of the statistics of the oyster trade of the 

 whole eastern coast. All these gentlemen have been at work for a 

 greater or less time, some of them since July last, and have transmitted 

 to the office in Washington an immense amount of information. 



It is confidently expected that the report of General Walker on the 

 subject of the fisheries will be not inferior in any respect to other special 

 reports for which he has made arrangements. 



In addition to the collecting of statistics, the employes of this division 

 have been instructed to obtain illustrations of the fisheries, such as 

 specimens or models of fishing-gear, nets, boats, traps, &c. ; samples of 

 prepared fish and the like; they are also gathering a great deal of infor- 

 mation relating to the natural history of the marine and fresh-water 

 animals. 



A very important corollary of this work is the information it will 

 furnish for use in any future arbitration between the United States and 

 the British Provinces in regard to the value of its coast fisheries. It 

 is well known that the cause of the United States, at the meeting in 

 Halifax in 1877, went almost by default in consecpience of the absence 



