450 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



life tliat would eudure the cbaiige of coDdition without detriment to 

 their health and vigor, provided their proper food was supplied them. 



But it is the habit of tliose most desirable to transfer, to spend 

 a portion of each year in fresh w^ater, and it is difficult to find the 

 reason why if the salt-water is not essential to them part of the year 

 it should be during the remainder. The absence of their proper food in 

 the streams they ascend would seem to be the principal necessity for 

 their return to the sea. 



Experiments in planting salt-water fishes in fresh waters have been , 

 made heretofore with success. The striped-bass of the Atlantic waters 

 has been kept for a number of years in inland ponds. Eudolf Hessel, 

 a fish-culturist of Europe, informed me that he had put a number of 

 flounders in Lake Constance, of Switzerland, several years ago, and 

 that fishermen occasionally found them in their nets at the present day. 

 The transfer of shad to the lakes was not, however, an entirely new 

 experiment. Setli Green, when moving shad to the Pacific coast in 1871, 

 made small plants at Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago, and the same 

 year put 5,000 shad into the Genesee Eiver, of New York State. 



At Toledo, Ohio, last fall, the firms of Bowes & Howell and Davis, 

 Brother & Beatty reported having had unmistakable shad in their ware 

 houses during the season. These were undoubtedly from Mr. Green's 

 planting. At the Genesee Eiver many shad were taken in the nets of 

 the fishermen developed from the young of the planting of 1871. In 

 the latter case they might i)0ssibly descend to the brackish waters of the 

 Saint Lawrence, but in the former they must necessarily have spent the 

 whole of the intervening year and a half in fresh water. 



The finding of the yearling shad in Lake Champlain has been referred 

 to on another page. Two plantings were made in 1872 at Salamanca, N. 

 Y., in the Alleghany River, and one at Indianapolis, Ind., in the White 

 Eiver. At Terre Haute, Ind., this season, young shad were taken from 

 the Wabash Eiver that had strayed thus far from the place where they 

 h£id been consigned to the waters of the Ohio Valley. 



All these facts afforded sufficient hope of success to warrant a large 

 planting of shad as an experiment in the lakes. 



24. — POPULARITY OF THE WORK OF THE COMMISSION. 



In continual conversation with those I have met a uniform approba- 

 tion and satisfaction has been expressed that an effort was being made 

 to restore the stock of food-fishes in the waters of the country, and from 

 citizens of those States we have not been able to benefit this season, the 

 desire was expressed that their claims should be regarded as early in 

 the future as possible. The general awakening all over the country to 

 the interest of food-fisheries is indicated bj^ the numerous bills passed in 

 the legislatures in late years. 



Of the States bordering on the lakes, Vermont, New York, Penn- 



