478 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [2] 
improvements, &c. Every year they submit to the legislature a statis- 
tical report, showing the work done during the year, the progress at- 
tained, and the observations made respecting pisciculture or fishing in- 
dustries, the quantity of eggs or young fish distributed, &c. 
Twenty-one States have State-hatcheries for the production of young 
fish, destined to restock the public waters. Some States, like Michigan, 
possess as many as three of these hatcheries. There are, therefore, in op- 
eration thirty-eight of these establishments, not counting those created 
for the piscicultural work undertaken by the Federal Government, be- 
sides that done by the States on their own account. In Connecticut 
the commission, which does not yet possess a hatchery, has made a con- 
tract with two private establishments for producing the young fish 
which it needs annually, and pays to the owners of these establish- 
ments a dollar for every thousand eggs which it hatches. 
To the State of Massachusetts belongs the honor of having officially 
introduced pisciculture in the United States. This State was the first 
to intrust to a commission “ the duty of studying facts relative to the 
artificial propagation of fish, and the ways and means of causing this 
industry to contribute, under the protection of the law, to the wealth 
of the State.” Various experiments were made (in 1856) by this com- 
mission, which published a report on the condition of pisciculture in 
foreign countries, including a translation of the remarkable article pub- 
lished by M. Jules Haime in the Revue des deux mondes in 1854. 
But the idea was not yet fully matured;* the public did not fathom 
the full importance of these experiments, which passed almost unob- 
served; and it was only in 1865 that Massachusetts definitely consti- 
tuted her Fish Commission on the present basis. 
Vermont and New Hampshire, and later, Connecticut and Pennsyl- 
vania followed the example set by Massachusetts, and created Fish Com- 
missions whose duty it should be to restock the public waters. In 1864 
Mr. Seth Green founded, near New York, the first American piscicul- 
tural establishment, on thorough business principles, and he soon found 
many imitators. 
The results obtained by private enterprise proved the importance of 
similar establishments for rapidly restocking water-courses, and, in 
1867, the State of Massachusetts established at South Hadley Falls, on 
the Connecticut River, a hatchery for the artificial propagation of shad. 
In the same place and the same year Mr. Seth Green, who had also 
occupied himself with the propagation of shad, invented his hatching 
apparatus, consisting of inclined boxes floating in the water. These 
everywhere, even in the largest rivers, such as the Mississippi, the right of fishing be- 
longs to the inhabitants of the banks, but only to the point where the tide makes itself 
felt, and where the maritime domaincommences. In the Southern States, on the con- 
trary, the right of fishing in the great water-courses belongs to the State. 
*It is only three years since Mr. Theodotus Garlich and Prof. H. B. Ackley of Cleve- 
land, Ohio, the two pioneers of American pisciculture, made their first attempts at ar- 
tificial fecundation. 
