THE SEA FISHERIES OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA. 197 



Q. Including the lake fisheries ? — A. Including hake, ring, and shell-fish. Our 

 oyster fisheries are worth $30,000,000 a year. 



Q. That is nearly double the entire Canadian return ? — A. Perhaps. There are 

 $3,000,000 worth of oysters put in cans in Baltimore yearly. 



Q. They are all included in the Canadian returns ? — A. I think so. Those indus- 

 tries with them are not so important as ours. Our off-shore codfish, lake and river 

 shad, salmon, herring, lobster, crab, oyster, and clam fisheries are included. 



Q. Now, with reasonable legislation to limit certain methods of fishing, is there in 

 your judgment any danger to the existence of the inshore, coast, and lake fisheries ? 

 — A. I think that the lake fisheries would have been exhausted and greatly destroyed 

 in a comparatively limited number of years but for the timely warning taken by Can- 

 ada and the United States and the measures initiated in both countries for increasing 

 the supply. 



Q. You yourself have been very much engaged on the subject of the propagation of 

 fish ? — A. Not so much in the lakes directly as in the rivers. 



Q. You have shipped some of your fish by rail to California ? — A. Yes, 



Q. I remember reading an account of one of your large collections for California 

 being lodged in one of the rivers by a bridge breaking down, for which collection the 

 State has never paid? — A. Yes, a car of live fish which was being sent to California. 



Q. In order to get some idea of the manipulation practiced in the breeding establish- 

 ments, perhaps you will state whether steam machinery is not now. used? — A. That 

 is a device we have adopted this year for the first time in hatching shad, in which, 

 instead of depending on the natural current of the river usually employed, we make 

 the trays filled with spawn move up and down in the water in a continuous alterna- 

 tion, and in that way hatching millions of eggs where formerly we could only hatch 

 thousands. 



Q. You can state a case showing the result of one year's experiment. — A. We had 

 eleven millions of shad in Susquehanna River in about three weeks in May and June. 



Q. Can you state to the Commission the result of some fish operations at Potomac 

 River ? — A. The instance to which you refer is that of black bass. The black bass 

 is not indigenous to the Potomac River, and none were in it. About two years ago 

 half a dozen adult fish were placed in the river, and it might now be said that the 

 Potomac, with the exception of St. John's River, Florida, is the most prolific in black 

 bass of any stream in the United States. Over an extent of one hundred miles, the 

 fishing for black bass both for market and sport is unrivaled anywhere. 



Q. Without claiming too much for our people, are not the ingenuity and industry 

 of the American people in taking fish for consumption and other uses on the one hand, 

 and in propagating them on the other, very great and very remarkable ? How is 

 that? — A. The methods of fish-culture as practiced in the United States, and in 

 Canada so far as they cover the same ground, are, we think, better than those any- 

 where in the Old World, and both countries hatch fish by millions where thousands 

 are considered a large performance in Europe. The United States have a single es- 

 tablishment in California at which more eggs are obtained than are gathered by all 

 European hatcheries put together. This year we have taken about six million eggs, 

 and we have taken as many as eight millions in a year. We have an establishment 

 now on Columbia River where we expect to hatch twenty millions of eggs. Three 

 millions of eggs, I may say, in illustration of magnitude, would fill a hay-field cart to 

 its utmost capacity. 



Q. You have an estimate of the combined fishing of the United States for the year 

 187(5, including the Bank fishing? — A. Yes. This is a table of the product of the 

 marine fisheries of the United States east of Cape May within the treaty limits. The 

 total product of the inshore fisheries of that range, the fish taken by boats from the 

 shore, that taken by seines, by traps, pouuds, &c, amounts to 319,579,950 pounds, of 

 a mean value of $4,064,484. The total fisheries of the United States, inshore and off- 

 shore within the limits, amount to 1,045,855,750 pounds, of the value of $13,030,821. 



