CONFERENCES WITH STATE COMMISSIONERS. 767 



tbe headwaters of certain streams. This was three years ago, and this 

 year, for the first time, the market in Boston has had a great many sal- 

 mon, weighing from two to three pounds, taken in gill-nets set for mack- 

 erel. Almost every man in the fish-market in this city has had salmon, 

 weighing from one to three pounds, brought from the east, and unques- 

 tionably the fish which the Massachusetts commissioners placed in the 

 rivers of that State. The only way to prevent the taking of these small 

 salmon would be to pass a law, making it a penal offense to have any 

 such fish weighing less than five pounds for sale or in one's possession. 



Mr. Thaddeus Norris said he was an old salmon-fisher, and had 

 given the subject of fish -propagation considerable attention, and had 

 learned a good deal about the habits and instincts of salmon. The sal- 

 mon that Mr. Wilmot, of Canada, procures is a fresh-water fish. The 

 fish of the lakes have lost their sea-going instinct. Lake Ontario is their 

 v\intering-place ; and they live there all the year when not going up the 

 streams to spawn ; this done, they go back into the lake. The Sebago 

 salmon, he thought, was once a fish that went to the sea regularly ; and 

 that they are the same as the regular sea-going salmon. 



Dr. Edmunds said he saw salmon in Montreal that had herring in 

 them. This he thought an evidence that they feed in the rivers. 



Mr. Brackett thought the herring were probably taken before the 

 salmon entered the fresh water. No man could say he had ever taken 

 salmon with minnows in its stomach. 



Mr. iSToRRis thought the salmon of Lake Ontario were fresh-water 

 salmon, for the reason that they had minuo ws in them. He had visited 

 Saint John many times, and had been assured by Mr. Venning that 

 there were true salmon in Lake Lomond, which supplies the water 

 for the city of Saint John ; that they are called white-fish there, 

 having deteriorated in size. The fish, having gone up from the sea, had 

 been retained there, and now could not get back. Mr. Norris himself 

 believed them to be true salmon, and had seen them there not more 

 than 8 or 9 inches long. 



Mr. Brackett said that the Sebago salmon had been known to weigh 

 17 pounds. 



Mr. NoRRis. The obstructions were once removed and salmon then 

 ran up to Lake Lomond again. He thought there would be no difficulty 

 in stocking all the western lakes with salmon if an appropriation were 

 make to continue the work now begun. He thought the Sacramento 

 salmon should be placed in the northern rivers; he did not know where 

 the Rhine salmon should be placed. The Susquehanna and Delaware 

 he thought would be suitable for the Sacramento salmon. They can go 

 fifty miles above tide-water in the Susquehanna, even up into the State 

 of New York. He hoped New Jersey and Pennsylvania would be remem- 

 bered in the distribution of the eggs obtained from the Sacramento. 

 And he would be glad to try in those States the Rhine and the Penob- 

 scot salmon. They had facilities for hatching them in tributaries of the 

 Susquehanna near Harrisburgh. 



