266 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



None of these attempts were successful. If they liad been successful I 

 certainly should not have been asked to attempt the discovery. At last, 

 after various pei\sous had been at ^york for years on the problem, the 

 commissioners of the four States, Massachusetts, Connecticut, l^ew 

 Hampshire, and Vermont, came to my place at Caledonia for the purpose 

 of urging me to come to the Connecticut Eiver to try and make shad- 

 hatching a success. Of course I could not tell what the experiment 

 would cos^ and since so many had tried in vain I had good reason to 

 fear that I should not succeed. The commissioners offered to pay me 

 for the attem[)t, but as I felt some ])ride in the matter I offered to come 

 and try the experiment at my own expense, provided that if I was suc- 

 cessful they should pay me what was right. 



On June 29, 1867, 1 arrived at Holyoke. As a stranger, I vras of 

 course the object of some curiosity to the village people. I thought I 

 vv'ould talk with some of the fishermen and tr5r to interest them in the 

 project. Accordingly I told them for what I had come, and what I was 

 about to do. The surrounding crowd really did begin to be interested 

 in my talk, but gi-eeted me with expressions of unbelief more forcible 

 than elegant. 



Of course, I was thankful for such little expressions of encouragement, 

 and they naturally made me feel very cheerful. When I went to look 

 for a boarding-place, I could not find any ; or at least a day or two was 

 the limit of my stay at any one place. The house was full, or they expect- 

 ed some one else, or something was the matter. At first I could not get 

 men to haul a seine for me, in order to get breeders. But as money is 

 all-powerful, at last a few of the men contemptuously offered their serv- 

 ices for " a consideration," and on June 30 I made the first haul of one 

 hundred and twenty-five fish. The men looked upon me as a lunatic, 

 and very naturally treated me as such. I got the pans ready. Some one 

 handed me a rix^e shad, and I commenced to take out the eggs. Then 

 they all surrounded me, with a shad in each hand, and commenced to 

 I)oke at me dry fun and vulgar wit; while, as if by accident, every now 

 and then a shad would slip from some one's hand and be pretty sure to 

 come into contact with me before it fell, until, when I got through, I was 

 covered from head to foot with blood, milt, and slime. Nevertheless, I 

 took about one million eggs that time, all well impregnated, and left them 

 in the pans. The next morning I was up by four o'clock and had troughs 

 made for the eggs by noon. I found the eggs doing tolerably. 



Jzdy 2. — I suppose the fisherjuen thougbt I was going a little too far, 

 for when I went in the morning to visit the hatching-troughs, I found 

 the water all shut off and the troughs broken down. I am not ashamed 

 to say that, as I looked, a few drops, which were not rain, ran down my 

 cheeks. Some of the inhabitants of the place came down to where I 

 was, and on seeing the broken-down boxes and my disappointment, said 

 to me the first kind words 1 had heard since I came to the place, (except 

 from the commissioners.) I am not trying to make myself out to be a 

 martyr. The opposition vras only petty and vexatious, but it illustrates 

 exactly the state of public opinion on tlie question five years ago. After 

 that time I v/atched nights. 



I tried all sorts of troughs and boxes. At first I tried to hatch the 

 eggs in troughs similar to those used for hatching brook-trout, but found 

 that this would not worlc. Tlie shad-eggs were so light that a very lit- 

 tle water passing through the trough washed them out. Then I built 

 bars of coarse gravel across the troughs at intervals, and let on current 

 enough to wash the eggs into the gravel. By this method about 1 per 



