XVlll EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



express companies, especially tlie Adams and the American and 

 Merchants' Union. Without the help, of special instrnctions to flieir 

 agents to assist Messrs. Green and Clift, it \voiild have been difficult to 

 accomplish the object in view. 



Acknowledgments are also due to tlie commissioners, both of iS"ew York 

 and Connecticut, for placing their hatching-establishments at the disposal 

 of the United States in order to furnish the necessary number of eggs. 



Coucurrently with the operations on the part of the United States,, 

 the commissioners of boch New York and Connecticut were industriously 

 engaged during 1872 in continuing exj^eriments previously instituted in 

 regard to stocking the waters of their respective States with shad, and 

 incredible numbers of young fish have been introduced. Thus in New 

 Y'ork, under the efficient direction of Mr. Setli Green, nearly 7,000,000 

 shad were released in the waters of the State, while the extraordinary 

 number of 92,065,000 young fish is reported by Dr. Hudson to have been 

 turned into the waters of the Connecticut. Dr. Edmunds, commissioner 

 of Vermont, also obtained 50,000 young fish from Mr. Green, which were 

 placed inBurlington Bay, Lake Cham plain. 



Yv'^hether shad can live permanently in fresh water, and maintain those 

 characteristics of flavor and size which give them such a prominence, and 

 ■whether they can be established in the Mississippi Valley are problems 

 not yet solved; but tlie results to be obtained, in the event of its possi- 

 bility, are of sucli transcendant importance in relation to the food-supply 

 of the country, and the cost of the experiment so very trifling, that it 

 would be inexcusable not to attempt it. 



11. — PROPAaATION OF MAINE SALMON IN 1872. 



More time was allowed for satisfa(;tory arrangements in regard to the 

 propagation of salmon than of shad, because of the much later period 

 in the year when they spawn ; this in the common salmon (*S^. salar) not 

 taking -place until the end of October or the beginning of November, 

 and varying with the localit5\ 



In compliance with the suggestion of tlie meeting at Boston, I had 

 an interview with Mr. Charles G. Atkins at Bangor, and ascertained 

 the probable degree of expansion that he could give to his operations 

 at Bucksport, on the Penobscot River, with additional funds. 



The method devised by him consists in obtaining mature fish as they 

 come up the river and are taken by the fisliermen, placing them in 

 a pen situated in a large pond of about 150 acres, and keeping them 

 there until the season of reproduction, and then securing the spawn, 

 and, after impregnating it, hatching it in a suitable hatching-house. 



The only method of obtaining salmon in sufficient numbers was to 

 offer the full market-price to the fishermen for all they may deliver 

 alive to the hatching-establishment. About six hundred fish were 

 thus obtained during the summer. Bnt little mortality occurred amoug 

 these fish, and, on the 28th of October, Mr. Atkins and his assist- 



