268 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
FISH CULTURE. 
The artificial culture of salmon is carried on in 56 hatcheries, which 
are distributed in Hokkaido and the prefectures of Aomori, Akita, 
Yamagata, Niigata, Toyama, Kyoto, Iwate, and Miyagi. Nine of 
these belong to the government of Hokkaido and other prefectures, 
while the rest are owned by fishing associations, individuals, or corpo- 
rations. The number of yqung salmon distributed by these hatch- 
erles amounts to over 80,000,000 a year. 
The largest hatchery is the one at Chitose, under the supervision of 
the Hokkaido Fishery Experimental Station. It was established in 
1887, and it is estimated that the fish distributed by it number from 
20,000,000 to 30,000,000 yearly. 
The salmon hatchery of Murakami, Niigata prefecture, dates as 
far back as 1881, when a regulation pertaining to the preservation of 
young salmon in the River Miomote was enacted by the prefecture 
of Nugata. This was first called the ‘‘Murakami Salmon Raising 
Plant,” but in 1891 it was turned into a hatchery, and is now dis- 
tributing 2,000,000 young salmon a year. The salmon hatchery of 
Nitta River, Fukushima prefecture, is very similar in its history and 
organization to the above. 
The industry has during the last few years become very popular in 
Yamagata prefecture, where 22 hatcheries are in operation as private 
enterprises. 
In the prefectures of Shiga, Miye, Shizuoka, Nagano, Yamanashi, 
~Kanagawa, Akita, Niigata, Hyogo, Miyazaki, and Hokkaido, the 
masu (O. masou) and the landlocked hime-masu (QO. nerka) are raised 
and distributed in the lakes and rivers. There are eight hatcheries 
working on these species. The hatchery of Lake Towada, Akita 
prefecture, first transplanted hime-masu from Hokkaido in 1902, 
and it is now hatching from 5,000,000 to 10,000,000 eggs a year for 
the purpose of distributing the fish among the different districts. 
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