XXIV REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



that promised to answer best the purposes of his mission. Quarter- 

 master-General Meigs had supplied him with letters of recommeudatioa 

 to the officers of his department in the West; but, to his regret, Mr. 

 Stone found no military post sufhciently near to render hiui any par- 

 ticular assistance during the present season. 



After much fruitless inquiry, Mr. Stone at last learned, chiefly through 

 Mr. B. Jj. Redding, fish-commissioner of California, aud through the 

 chief engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad, that the Indians speared 

 salmon on the McCh)ud River, a stream of the Sierra Nevada, em i^ tying 

 into Pitt Eiver three hundred aud twenty miles nearly due north of 

 San Francisco. Proceeding to this station, in company with Mr. Jolin 

 G. Woodbury, of the Acclimatization Society, Mr. Stone immediately set 

 to work in erecting the necessary hatching establishment, although, on 

 account of the distance from any settlement aud the absence of special 

 facilities, he found the undertaking both difficult and expensive. The 

 efforts of Mr. Stone and his party were prosecuted uniutermittingly, 

 day ami night, for a sufficient length of time to prov'e that the season 

 had almost entirely passed, and that but few spawning fish remained. 

 Many thousands of spawn were secured, however, and placed in hatch- 

 ing-troughs; but the extraordinary heat of the season, rising day after 

 day to 110° and 112° in the shade, finally accomplished the destruction 

 of the greater portion. 



The surviving eggs collected by Mr. Stone (30,000 in number) were 

 packed by him in moss and forwarded October 20 by express, addressed to 

 his establishment at Charlestown, N. U., this designation being selected 

 in the failure to reach him, of a letter directing their transmission to 

 Dr. Slack, at Bloomsbury, N. J. On receiving a telegraphic dispatch 

 announcing the shipment, I immediately telegraphed to Charlestown, 

 directing the packages to be forwarded at once to Dr. Slack, and sent 

 also a telegram to the office of Wells, Fargo & Co., at Albany, request- 

 ing that, if the eggs had not already passed that point, they might be 

 intercepted there and returned at once to New Jersey. This dispatch 

 came too late, as the eggs had passed when it was received ; but the 

 superintendent of Mr. Stone's establishment forthwith sent the eggs to 

 New Jersey, with a skilled assistant to take charge of them and deliver 

 them at their destination. Unfortunately, in consequence of the warmth, 

 and through a miscalculation of the rapidity with which they accom- 

 plished their changes, the eggs were in large part hatched out on the 

 journey, so that of the 30,000 originally shipped all but about 7,01)0 were 

 hatched. The remainder were immediately piclced out and placed in 

 the hatching-house by Dr. Slack. The brood proved to be unusually 

 hardy, very few dying, and all manifesting an extraordinary voracity for 

 the food supplied to them. 



By the advice of the various State commissioners and fish-eulturists at 

 a meeting in New York in October, it was concluded to place this stock 

 of young fish in the Susquehanna ; Mr. James Worrall, late commissioner 



