230 EEPOET OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



and liere, by the end of October, a large part of them attained a length 

 of 3 inches. They were now about nine months old, and only 8 per 

 cent, of them had been lost since hatching. At West Barnstable 

 Messrs. Dexter, Coolidge & Bacon hatched out, for the State, 1,700 

 salmon, and kept them through the season, losing, between the middle 

 of May and the last of November, only 4 per cent, of this number. The 

 largest of them were then 5 inches long, a remarkable growth, which is 

 attributed in part to their having occupied during the summer and 

 fall a pond 2 feet deep. About an equal number of salmon (1,700) 

 was hatched by Mr. E. A. Brackett, of Winchester.* The final distri- 

 bution of the several lots of young salmon hatched in Massachusetts 

 from this stock of eggs is, as far as 1 have been able to trace it, as fol- 

 lows : 700, raised at Winchester, in the Mystic Eiver; 1,500, raised at 

 West Barnstable, in one of the streams of Cape Cod ; the brood at 

 East Wareham, "in suitable waters."t 



Of the salmon hatched by Mr. Stone himself, 2,000 were sold in the 

 spring of 1869 to the Poquonnoc Fish Company of Connecticut. A 

 few of them were kept in the trout-ponds until the spring of 1870, and 

 the rest were turned into Great Brook, a small stream tributary to Long 

 Island Sound, about three miles east of New London.* Of those re- 

 tained in the ponds a few became smolts in 1870, and all were turned 

 into the same brook to take their chances. Ninety yearling salmon 

 from the same stock of eggs were this year purchased of Mr. Stone 

 and placed in the same waters.f 



Another lot of fry from Mr. Stone's hatching- works were sold to Ver- 

 mont in 1869, and placed by her commissioners in small tributaries of 

 the Winooski River, near Montpelier, and in West Eiver, at Weston. 

 Some observations made on the fortunes that attended these fish gave 

 results that are worth recording as illustrating the dangers to which 

 young fish are exposed. Care was taken to select streams in which 

 there were no fish but very small ones ; yet it was but a short time be- 

 fore quite a number of small dace were discovered in the midst of the 

 young salmon ; the former were very active, the latter sluggish and 

 bewildered, and making no eftbrt to escape. Within half an hour after 

 placing some salmon in a stream near Montpelier, a dace only 2 or 3 

 inches long was caught, and found to have swallowed four young salmon. 

 Some of this brood escaped destruction, however, and were seen late 

 in the summer and fall of the same year.§ 



Of the disposition made of the remainder of Mr. Stone's stock of eggs, 

 I have no definite information ; but for the sake of an approximate 

 estimate of the total number of young salmon turned into the rivers as 



* Report of the [Massachusetts] Couimissioiiers of Fisheries for the year ending 

 January 1, 1870, pp. 31, .'^2. 



t Fifth Annual Report of the [Massachusetts] Conunissiouers ou Inland Fisheries, 

 January, 1871, pp. 11, 15. 



t W. Clift, MSS. 



§ Letter of Prof. A. D. Hager. 



