ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION OF STURGEON. 



Part 1. REVIEW OF STURGEON CULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES. 



By Glkn ('. Leach, 

 Assistant in Charge Division of Fish Culture, U. S. Bureau of Fisheries. 



A niiin])or of attempts have been made in the T'^nited States at 

 various times to propagate tlie sturgeon by the artificial manipulation 

 of the eggs, but in every instance they have been rendered practically 

 null by certain unusually persistent difficulties. An account of the 

 efforts may be of interest and value, j)articularly in view of the fact, 

 as appears from the accompanying j)aper of Prof. N. A. Borodin, 

 formerly connected with the Russian department of agriculture, that 

 most of these obstacles were overcome in the course of some experi- 

 mental work performed under his direction as chief specialist in 

 fish culture in that department. 



The first attempt at sturgeon propagation by a representative of 

 the United States Government was m 1888 at Delaware City, Del., 

 in the course of an investigation of the sturgeon fishery by Dr. John 

 A. Ryder (Bulletin, V. S. Fish Commission, 1888), but experiments 

 alone that line had been conducted by Seth Green at New Hamburg, 

 N. 'i ., as earlv as 1875, and were described by liiui in his book en- 

 tilled " Fish hatching and Fish Catching," published at Rochester in 

 1879. 



The eggs for the experiment at Delaware City were obtained from 

 fish landed for the market. A number of such fish were examined, 

 but of the various lots of eggs secured only one small lot was suc- 

 cessfully hatched. In this instance they were taken by opening the 

 female fish, and after fertilization had been accomplished by the 

 application of milt secured in the customary manner, the eggs were 

 spread in a single layer over the cheesecloth bottoms of shallow boxes 

 and anchored in a small sluiceway where there was a constant current 

 of water. 



The same drawbacks — viz. difficulty in finding ripe eggs and milt 

 at the same time, imperfect aeration of the eggs during the incuba- 

 tion period, and the unusual tendency of the eggs to develop fungus — 

 were again encountered in the course of a second attempt to propa- 

 gate, sturgeon at Delaware City by Dr. Bashford Dean in 1898. The 

 work of that year disclosed the feasii)ility of using as a feitilizing 

 medium milt secured by the removal of testes from male fish which 



