XXXIV EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



however, for the Uuited States that we may claim the fullest develop- 

 ment of the art of pisciculture, both as to the perfection of its uiethods 

 and the extent of its operations. 



On the authority of the Southern Cultivator, the Rev. Dr. John Bach- 

 man, of Charleston, S. C, as early as 1804, at the age of fourteen, impreg- 

 nated and hatched the eggs of trout and other tishes. This has been 

 questioned by some ; but Dr. Slack, in his work on trout-culture, well 

 remarks that Dr. Bachman's reputation as a Christian and a naturalist 

 is too well established to permit us to doubt his word. It is not pre- 

 tended, indeed, that the idea was original with him, but he probably 

 found in the work of Duhamel du Monceau the account of the methods 

 of Jacobi and imitated them. 



In 1853 Dr. Theodatus Garlick and Professor Ackley established 

 a fish-farm near Cleveland, Ohio; the result of their experiences 

 being published in Dr. Garlick's work, entitled "A Treatise on the 

 Artificial Propagation of Certain Kinds of Fish ; Cleveland, Ohio, 1857." 



In 1859, Mr. Stephen H. Ainsworth, of West Bloomfield, N. Y., began 

 his experiments, and has continued them up to the present time. Since 

 then, numerous establishments have been started, more particularly 

 devoted to the culture of the brook- trout, meriting and meeting a greater 

 or less degree of practical and pecuniary success.* 



I am indebted to Mr. Stone for a list, brought up to 1872, of persons 

 at that time known by him to have been engaged in the practical work of 

 fish-culture, or more or less interested in itssuccess. Although necessa- 

 rily incomplete, I have given it in the appendix as the basis of a fuller 

 enumeration hereafter. Among the more prominent names in this con- 

 nection we may mention the world-renowned Seth Green ; Dr. J. H. 

 Slack ; Livingston Stone ; William Clift ; S. H. Ainsworth ; A. S.Collins ; 

 N. W. Clark, &c. 



16. — ACTION OF STATE AND NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. 



The recent establishment of the American Fish-Culturists' Association, 

 a society designed to bring together those interested in the subject, 

 promises to be of great benefit in advancing a correct knowledge of the 

 best theory and practice of the science of fish-culture. It is to this body, 

 under the presidency of Mr. George Shepard Page, that we owe the first 

 movements which resulted in the recognition, by Congress, of the 

 national importance of fish-culture, and in the appropriations for the 

 multiplication of useful food-fishes in the national waters. 



As already stated, (page xvi,) it was in 1872 that the subject was 

 presented to Congress and fa\ orably acted upon ; the result being an 

 appropriation of $15,000 "for the introduction of shad into the waters 

 of the Pacific States, the Gulf States, and of the Mississippi Valley, and 



* Fuller details in regard to Americau iish-culture are given farther on in the article 

 hy Mr. Miluer, page 523. 



