REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 55 



mature, when the eggs will be stripped and hatched in the exception- 

 ally pure water of the harbor. 



As iij previous seasons, the Commission has to acknowledge the udI- 

 versal favor with which it has met on the part of presidents, managers^ 

 and superintendents of railways and steamboats, the various branches 

 of the Government and individuals generally. The formal acknowledg- 

 ments and details of this courtesy will be found in the report of the Com- 

 mission. The usual experiments have also been made of the transmis- 

 sion of the eggs of salmon, whitefish, and other species of fish to various 

 portions of Europe, in return for which we have received specimens of 

 Salmonidse as well as some of the later and improved varieties of Ger- 

 man carp. 



Bnlletiii of the Fish Commission. — During the last session of Congress- 

 an act was passed (approved February 14, 1881) instructing the Public 

 Printer to print and stereotype, from time to time, the regular number 

 of 1,900 copies of any matter furnished him by the United States Com- 

 missioner of Fish and Fisheries, relative to new observations, discover- 

 ies, and applications connected with fish-culture and the fisheries, to be 

 capable of being distributed in parts, and the whole to form an annual 

 volume or bulletin not exceeding 500 pages. The edition of this annual 

 work is to consist of 5,000 copies, of which 2,500 are for the use of the 

 House of Representatives, 1,000 for the use of the Senate, and 1,500 for 

 the use of the Commissioner. 



Fishery Census of 1880. — The reports of 1880 and 1881 contain details, 

 in regard to the co-operation between the United States Fish Commission 

 and the Census of 1880, under charge of Superintendent Francis A» 

 Walker, in collecting the statistics and history of the fisheries of the 

 United States in past years up to the present time. The result has been 

 the accumulation of a large mass of important information of very 

 great value. 



The report of 1881 gives an account of the special work of the gen- 

 tlemen employed for this purpose, and during the year 1882 the reports 

 mentioned below were published, leaving quite a number still to appear 

 as among the series of special reports of the Census. 



A number of other reports on fishes, of much interest but of less. 

 relationship to the work of the Census, were presented to Congress by 

 the Commission, and their publication ordered in a series of quarto- 

 volumes. Of these the first is well advanced and will be out in the 

 course of the year 1883. It is more particularly occupied by an ac- 

 count of the economical and natural history of the food-fishes and 

 invertebrates of the country, with the necessary illustrations. 



Another of these reports will include figures and descriptions of aU 

 the obsolete as well as more modern forms of apparatus for the pursuit, 

 capture, and utilization of the inhabitants of the waters, together with- 

 a very minute account of the apparatus of the whaler. 



