CONFERENCES WITH STATE COMMISSIONERS. 761 



Dr. Slack thought that the petroleum discharged into the Ohio Kiver 

 had killed off the fish. 



Mr. Brackett thought the Sebago salmon should be introduced into 

 the upper lakes. 



Mr. Stone understood that some of the salmon from Mr. Wilmot's 

 establishment had been introduced into Lake Superior, in order to test 

 the question whether they were land-locked and could subsist there. 

 They have been there already two or three years. 



Professor Baird said that Mr. Whitcher informed him that he had put 

 some into Lake Huron. The small crustaceans of the genus 31ysis, 

 ■which is the principal food of the salmon on the coast of Great Britain 

 and of Norway, are equally abundant in the deep waters of the great 

 lakes. Mr. Milner had found this Mysis in water over 25 fathoms in 

 depth. It is impossible to separate this shrimp-species from that of 

 Labrador. The same thing was found in the stomachs of the lake white- 

 fish. It is quite a common theory that the red color of the Salmonklce 

 is due to their feeding on small shrimps and other crustaceans. 



Mr. Brackett said he had been informed that when the^' built the 

 dam across the stream near Lake Sebago, they prevented the salmon 

 from going down the lake ; and in the course of time they bred very freely 

 below, and are still taken clear down to tide-water; but that the flesh is 

 of a clay-color or white, while all those in the lake itself are almost as 

 dark-red as the sea-salmon. 



Dr. Slack said that the large trout which he had raised from the egg 

 had white flesh, although those from which they came were red. 



Similar results were stated by other gentlemen ; and Dr. Slack said that 

 although he stocked his ponds with red-fleshed trout, in a year or two 

 the flesh became white. This is probably due to the absence of shrimps. 



Professor Baird inquired whether those present would advise him to 

 empower Mr. Atkins to obtain as many salmon-eggs as possible j and 

 it was agreed to as desirable. 



Dr. Slack said New Jersey would take a portion of them. 



Professor Baird expressed doubts as to the practicability of intro- 

 ducing the Penobscot salmon successfully south and west of the Hud- 

 son. He thought they would not get the proper temperature iu the open 

 rivers. It had been a theory that salmon were abundant in the Hud- 

 son ', but he had seen a positive statement that they were never taken 

 west of the Connecticut. The idea that salmon were in the Hudson 

 Eiver is based on the statement of Hendrick Hudson; and from the 

 season of the year in which he professed to have seen them, and from 

 the locality, there is not the slightest doubt that they were weak-fish. 

 The oldest records of our own writers say nothing about salmon west of 

 the Connecticut River. But Williams and Douglass, who both wrote a 

 hundred years ago, state that in the Connecticut River they were very 

 abundant, but none were to be found west of it. There is no doubt 

 that they occurred iu the Connecticut. 



