[23] THE STATUS OF THE FISH COMMISSION. 1161 



In the two Government hatcheries at Alpena and Northville, Mich., 

 there have, in the winter of 1883-'84, been produced over 100,000,000 

 eggs of the whitefish, Coregonus clupeiformis, and the total number of 

 young fish to be placed in the Great Lakes this year by these and the 

 various State hatcheries will exceed 225,000,000. The fishermen of the 

 Great Lakes admit that but for public fish culture half of them would 

 be obliged to abandon their calling. 



Instances of great improvement might be cited in connection with 

 nearly every shad river in the United States. In the Potomac alone 

 the annual yield has been brought up by the operations of the Fish 

 Commission from 668,000 pounds, in 1877, to an average of more than 

 1,600,000 in recent years. 



In 1882 carp bred in the Fish Commission ponds in Washiugton were 

 distributed in lots of 20 to 10,000 applicants in every State and Terri- 

 tory, at an everage distance of more than 900 miles, the total mileage 

 of the shipments being about 9,000,000 miles, and the actual distance 

 traversed by the transportation cars 34,000 miles. 



Public fish-culture is only useful when conducted upon a gigantic 

 scale ; its statistical tables must be footed up in hundreds of millions. 

 To count young fish by the thousands is the task of the private propa- 

 gator. The use of steamships and steam machinery, the construction 

 of refrigerating transportation cars, and the maintenance of permanent 

 hatching stations, seventeen in number, in different parts of the conti- 

 nent, are forms of activity only attainable by Government aid. 



Equally unattainable by private effort would be the enormous experi- 

 ments in transplanting and acclimatizing fish in new waters ; Califor- 

 nia salmon in the rivers of the east ; landlocked salmon and smelt in 

 the lakes of the interior ; such as the planting of shad in California 

 and the Mississippi Valley ; and German carp in thirty thousand separate 

 bodies of water, distributed through all the States and Territories in the 

 Union ; the two last-named experiments, carried out within a period of 

 three years, have met with successes beyond doubt, and of the greatest 

 importance to the country; the others have been more or less success- 

 ful, though their results are not yet fully realized. 



It has been demonstrated, however, beyond possibility of challenge, 

 that the great river fisheries of the United States, which produced in 

 1880, 48,000,000 pounds of alewives, 18,000,000 pounds of shad, 52,000,000 

 pounds of salmon, besides bass, sturgeon, and smelt, aud worth "at first 

 hands" between $4,000,000 and $6,000,000, are entirely under the con- 

 trol of the fish culturist to sustain or destroy, and are capable of im- 

 mense extension. 



There still exists in Europe some skepticism as to the beneficial re- 

 sults of fish culture. Such doubts do not exist on our own side of the 

 Atlantic, if the continuance from year to year of grants of public money 

 may be considered to be a test of public confidence. 



