251 



peems that C )mmissioners of this State have done more than tliose of any other 

 state in furnishing for the inhabitants a cheap supply of fish. This state 

 has not been at all backward in furnishing money for the fish Commissioners. 

 If I remember rightly, the Commission was first appointed in 1868 ; the late 

 Horatio Seymour, our friend the late Seth Green, and Mr. R. B. Roosevelt 

 were appointed Commissioners to examine the subject Their report covered the 

 ground completely. From that time interest in the matter thi'oughout the state 

 has been steadily growing, and it maj^ be a surprise to some of you to know that 

 during those years this State has appropriated $433,000 for the aid of the fish 

 Commissioners in various ways ; that includes S6,500 for the appropriation for 

 shell fish ; but aside from that, either for clerk hire or appropriations, that 

 immense amount of money has been appropriated. I have no criticism or comment 

 to make on the way that that money has been expended ; in my judgment great 

 good has come from it. The commissioners have laboured assiduousl}' and intel- 

 ligently. They have performed all the duties without any salary, which I think 

 is not to the credit of the State ; I believe there should be a proper salary affixed 

 to that office, but of that the Commissioners have not complained, and perhaps I 

 should not. But in my judgment, it is not of the greatest importance to the 

 inhabitants of this State that the Adirondacks, and island lakes and streams should 

 be stocked, which, for a great part are private property, or owned by the State, 

 and generally inaccessible, in which the ordinary citizen cannot fish because pro- 

 hibited either by reason of private ownership or by being the property of the 

 State. It is not of the first importance that those small inland lakes or rivers 

 should be stocked with fish ; not a tenth of the importance that the supply of 

 whitefish and salmon in Lake Ontario, and shad in the Hudson River .should be 

 increased. For the great majority of people in this state, trout in the Adirondacks 

 are not of great consequence, but it is important that the immense quantity of 

 whitefish and salmon that once existed in Lake Ontario should be restored, for 

 then, in this locality, whitefish were sold for the nominal sum of four or five 

 cents a pound, and furnished a great industr}'' to parties along the lake from Lew- 

 iston to Kingston ; and the salmon trout, the finest fish I believe found on the 

 Northern States, is almost extinct except in the northern shore in Lake Ontario. 

 Since I have held an official relation with this and Orleans County, I have made 

 inquiries in regard to salmon trout. There are people living in this county who 

 remember that twenty-five or thirty years ago salmon were in great abundance. 

 I have recently conversed with intelligent citizens of Orleans County who state 

 that in Oak Orchard Creek, Johnson's Creek and in Sandy Creek, forty years 

 ago salmon trout weighing as high as twenty to twenty-three pounds were 

 caught in abundance. The^e was no difficulty whatever in the average fisherman 

 going to either of those creeks and supplying his fam^y with all the fish desired. 

 Now those streams, particularly Johnson's Creek, Sandy Creek and Oak Orchard 

 Creek have a gravelly bottom, and from aught I can see, are as well adapted to 

 the cultivation of salmon to-day as forty years ago. At that time, and perhaps 

 for fifteen or twenty years after that, it is very likely that the sawdust which 

 accumulated in great V|uantities and floated down the streams in large quantities, 

 drove the fish away. At least the fishermen attributed it to that, and I am 

 informed that hemlock sawdust is poisonous to fish. At all events there areno 

 salmon there to-day and have not been for thirty-five years. But there is nothing 

 of that now, and as far as I know there is no deleterious substance in those streams 

 which would prevent salmon and whitefish being hatched in those streams in 

 abundance ; and I have the suggestion to make, for T understand the meeting is 

 called for that purpose, that the Fish Commissioners of this State should turn 

 their attention more to establishing hatcheries at various points along Lake 



