PACIFIC SALMON FISHERIES. 17 
mouth of Naha Stream. Some of these also had the adipose removed, 
this mark having also been used on some of the fry. At the Fort- 
mann hatchery, where they were marked, only two of these fish were 
obtained in 1906. 
From then on until 1912, a period of 94 years, the return of a 
number of these supposedly marked fish is noted each year at the 
two hatcheries in question, the number reported in the last-named 
year being larger than in some of the intervening years. In the latter 
year Mr. Chamberlain himself pointed out the impossibility of these 
all being from the fry he had marked and no further attention was 
paid to them. 
The principal thing that this and some of the other many experi- 
ments in salmon marking prove is that the percentage of salmon 
which accidentally lose, either through disease or the attacks of their 
many enemies, one or more of their fins, or portions of same, is much 
larger than most people suppose. Out of the many millions taken 
annually in commercial and fish-cultural operations it is not surprising 
that some should be minus such exposed portions of their anatomy 
and this percentage would doubtless be found to be considerable were 
particular attention directed toward it. As it is now, it is only 
occasionally that the fisherman notices such loss, or mentions the 
same when he does, unless his attention has been directed to it by 
particular inquiry. In the Chamberlain experiment, for instance, 
after 1907 considerable publicity was given to the search for such 
marked fish, and the writer, in his travels through southeast Alaska 
during the succeeding years until the end of 1911, frequently was told 
by fishermen that they had caught salmon with missing fins. Inquiry 
developed that while a few of the lost fins were the same as Chamber- 
lain had excised, a number were entirely different fins, showing that 
when the attention of fishermen was directed especially in this line 
many deformed fish would be found. 
The confusion resulting from the many marking experiments 
carried on by different people shows the absolute necessity of some 
central authority regulating them if any real results are to be achieved 
- from this line of endeavor. In 1908 the Secretary of Commerce, under 
authority of sections 11 and 12 of the Alaska fisheries law, directed 
that any persons desiring to mark and release salmon in Alaska first 
consult with and secure the written consent of the Commissioner of 
Fisheries or of the agent at the salmon fisheries of Alaska. It would 
be an excellent thing if some such control could also be exercised 
over these operations in the coastal States. 
During the year 1916 Dr. Charles H. Gilbert, of Stanford Univer- 
sity, assisted by Willis H. Rich, conducted salmon-marking experi- 
ments on an extensive scale. Late in the fall of 1915 a consignment 
