LVIII REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISn AND FISHERIES. 

 21.— EY ARTIFICIAL AGENCIES. 



The other division of the subject relates to the actual stocking of the 

 waters artificially, either by transfer from one locality to another or by 

 the introduction of eggs artificially impregnated, or of young fish, the 

 results of hatching these eggs after being impregnated. It is a very 

 serious question which of these two great divisions, protection or 

 propagation, is the more important. In some cases preference would 

 be given to the one, and in some to the other. Either method alone is 

 largely insufficient ; it is the combination of the two that gives us the 

 best results. 



Transplanting of fisli from one region or locality to another. — By this 

 term I refer to fish that have been born in the waters by the natural 

 process and transferred to distant points. Sometimes this is done 

 accidentally, as when fish ponds are broken down by floods, and the 

 fish are carried into larger waters. More generally, however, this 

 term represents a special feature of the service of many of the western 

 State Fish Commissions. 



The high floods of the sj^ring and summer frequently carry into the 

 adjacent fields or prairies great numbers of fish, which, as the waters 

 recede, are left, either in these localities or in bayous belonging to the 

 main stream, to perish. Many millions of fish are annually destroyed 

 in this way. The State commissions, however, have aided greatly in 

 preventing the loss, by carefully gathering up the young fr^^ as well as 

 the adults, thus concentrated, and returning them to the main river. 



Artificial propagation. — The method of intentional transplantation 

 just referred to is very important in its way, and should be carried out 

 as largely as possible. It is, however, to the artificial propagation of 

 the fish, whether of the lakes, the rivers, or the ocean, that we may 

 look with the greatest assurance of a profitable result. There is no 

 doubt that many serious disappointments have been experienced as the 

 result of work actually initiated in this direction, and the hopes not 

 only of a rapid recovery from depletion, but also of an increase in the 

 supply, have in many cases been entirely blasted ; so that at the pres- 

 ent time it may safely be said there is much less enthusiasm as to the 

 results than before. 



Failures have resulted in a large degree from the limited scale on 

 which the work has been carried out. If the expectancy of destruction 

 in a given locality be estimated as representing one million young fish, 

 and any number Uhh than one million be introduced therein, it is easy 

 to understand that there will be no result. 



In the earlier days of the Fish Commission large quantities of eggs 

 and young were unprocurable, and it was only by gradual processes 

 that the spawning fish were multiplied sufficiently to answer the pur- 

 pose in question. This, however, has been accomplished in the case of 

 the shad and some other species, so that where six or eight years ago 



