694 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
our steamer, using the hose. We did so for several days the latter part of November 
and the early part of December. We had an inch hose and a rotary pump; and we took 
up only afew thousand eggs. I can not give you the percentage, but it was somewhere 
in the vicinity of one egg out of three or four hundred, and, as I remember it now, we got 
only eleven or twelve impregnated eggs during our two or three days’ work. Our work 
was off North Bass Island, and around the island near the hatchery where I was then 
superintendent. 
Professor PRINCE. There is just one error that I think Mr. Clark would willingly con- 
sent to having removed, and that is that spawning grounds in the Great Lakes are all 
polluted. On the Canadian side there are splendid spawning beds which are unpolluted. 
There are great spawning grounds in Lake Erie and Georgian Bay unpolluted, and the 
benefit of these spawning grounds must be felt on the Great Lakes, as the benefit of the 
hatcheries is also felt. I wish to say that I am as strong an advocate as anybody for 
artificial culture, and have said so in numerous official reports; but I also think that if 
you can combine that work with a closed season, then you have an ideal state of things. 
Mr. SAMUEL F. FULLERTON (Minnesota). Mr. President and gentlemen of the congress, 
have you taken into consideration that men whom I claim to be the foremost in the United 
States to day in their profession have written papers, all in different directions and 
all coming to the same conclusion? If any of your family were sick and there were a 
horse doctor and a physician of high standing in the same community, which would 
you employ—the horse doctor? No, you would take the physician of high standing. 
Here is Mr. Clark, who has been in the business for forty years, and Mr. Downing has 
perhaps been in it as long—men whose word is law in regard to fish culture; and we should 
take their word, not that of the horse doctor. Now, in our state last year we had a law 
suit; and I think this will illustrate the point I want to make as well as anything else. 
At that law suit we had the evidence of eleven fish culturists—the foremost men we 
could get. We went all over the United States for them; and the conclusion they all 
reached was the same: That not one whitefish or pike perch egg in 500 ever came to 
maturity. They were sworn men; they had made tests. I have been at it eighteen 
years, and I have taken eggs off the bottom rocks and off the sand and brought them 
to our hatchery and hatched them; but I never got 1 per cent of fry. [Applause]. 
Mr. Dwicut LypELL (Michigan). I have been listening very attentively to the 
speakers, and did not intend to say anything; but when some of them stated that we 
could get along without Dame Nature, I desire to say that I think we can not. I think 
all fish culturists are willing to admit that Dame Nature is what we need up to a certain 
point, when they step in and beat Dame Nature where the whitefish are concerned for 
the next five months. 
I took some dredgings on the Detroit River, under the instructions of the Michi- 
gan Fish Commission, several years ago, when they were engaged in the propagation of 
the whitefish; and out of two quarts that I gathered nearly every day with a dredge, 
I failed to find any impregnated whitefish eggs. This work was carried on during the 
months of March and April. No whitefish eggs were collected whatever that were 
good, although we got quarts and pails of poor ones. That was on the natural spawn- 
ing grounds. 
I do not think that we ought to compare our brook trout or any of our other spe- 
cies of fish, except the lake herring and wall-eyed pike, with our whitefish. The white- 
fish spawns promiscuously in the water wherever it happens to be. The brook trout 
clean off their beds in the streams and spawn on them; both the male and the female 
are there. Take the whitefish run on the Detroit River. The female whitefish come 
up there in great numbers after the male run has nearly passed by. The first run com- 
prises nearly all males; in the second run you will get ten females where you will get 
one male. As they are all ready to spawn, I think it would be impossible for one male 
to attend to so many females; but if the males that are caught from the first run are 
EE ——— 
