534 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



To these gentlemen should be ascribed the merit of inaugurating the 

 interest in fish-culture in this country. 



Mr. E. C. Kellogg, of Hartford, Coun., and Mr. D. W. Chapman, of 

 New York, began breeding operations at Simsbur^^ Conn., as early as 

 1855, and jniblished their results before the Connecticut State Agricul- 

 tural Society in 1856. A number of trout were captured and confined, 

 the eggs fecundated and placed in boxes with gravel on the bottoms, 

 through which a stream of water was led. At this first attempt seventy- 

 five trout were hatched ; some of them were taken from the pond the 

 next season. In 1856 Mr. Kellogg's efforts were not very encourag- 

 ing, because, as he believed, the eggs were not sufficiently mature, and 

 arrangements for hatching in the cellar of his house at Hartford were 

 imperfect. In 1857, with the apparatus in his cellar, and using water 

 from the regular city supply, he hatched four hundred trout. In 1859 

 Colonel Colt, of revolver fame, made very complete arrangements for 

 trout-hatching, of which Mr. Kellogg took charge, and about four thou- 

 sand eggs were impregnated and placed in the Latching establishment 



In 1857 the State of Connecticut passed an act affording certain pow- 

 ers and control of Saltonstall Lake for the purpose of fish-breeding, and 

 increase in the interest of Mr. Carl Muller, of New York, and Mr. Henry 

 Brown, of New Haven. They also obtained certain riparian privileges 

 from the owners of property bordering on the lake. A stream tributary 

 to the lake was selected as the breeding locality. 



In May of the same year they are said * to have artificially fecundated 

 twenty millions of eggs of the wall-eyed pike, {Lucioperca americana,) and 

 to have transported them from Lake Ontario to the lake, where they 

 were placed in the bed of the stream referred to and on the lake bottom^ 

 but the young fishes were all supposed to have been destroyed by a 

 sudden freshet. 



In November of the same year they visited Lake Ontario, and taking 

 males and females of the salmon trout, {Salmo namaycush,) and the white 

 fish, {Coregomis alhus^) alive from the nets of the fishermen, they impreg- 

 nated a large number of eggs, estimated by them at five millions for 

 the trout, and one million for the white fish. They were packed in al- 

 ternate layers with fine, wet sand.f The eggs were said to have the 

 appearance of being in good condition when they arrived and were de- 

 posited, the white fish ova upon the sandy spots and the trout ova upon 

 gravelly places in the stream-bed. In the March and April following 

 the young were said to have been seen in large numbers. 



In the autumn of 1858 ten millions ova of trout and white fish were 

 again obtained and placed in the lake and stream, and considerable num- 

 bers were believed to have been hatched. Trout are said to have been 

 taken afterward partly grown. 



* Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the year 1859. Agriculture, Washington , 

 1860. Article lish-breeding, by J. C. Comstock, of Hartford, Coun. j p. 227. 

 t Probably largely overestimated in both cases. 



