ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC SALMON* 



By Henry B. Ward 

 University of Illinois, Urhana, III. 



History repeats itself with monotonous regularity and 

 the most patent facts of scientific knowledge apparently 

 make no impression on the people at large even where 

 their own interests are vitally concerned. They try over 

 and over the same experiment and after the clearly fore- 

 told results have been secured they lament the unfortu- 

 nate consequences. Not only that but an expenditure of 

 money to improve the situation is often rendered useless 

 by action which passes without adequate protest from 

 those most immediately interested. 



In former centuries the Atlantic salmon ran yearly in 

 the rivers of the New England coast in such numbers as 

 to excite the amazement of our forefathers. They 

 thought the supply inexhaustible, but in 1798 a dam was 

 erected on the Connecticut River and the results are thus 

 described by Jordan and Evermann : 



The salmon was at one time very abundant in the Connecticut, and 

 it probably occurred in the Housatonic and Hudson. * * * The cir- 

 cumstances of their extermination in the Connecticut are well known, 

 and the same story, with names and dates changed, serves equally well 

 for other rivers. 



In 1798 a corporation known as the Upper Locks and Canal Com- 

 pany built a dam 16 feet high at Millers River, 100 miles from the 

 mouth of the Connecticut. For two or three years fish were seen in 

 great abundance below the dam, and for perhaps ten years they con- 

 tinued to appear, vainly striving to reach their spawning grounds ; but 

 soon the work of extermination was complete. When, in 1872, a soli- 

 tary salmon made its appearance, the Saybrook fishermen did not know 

 what it was. 



The experiment has been tried in many other places 

 and each time the result has been the same. We have 

 heard much in recent years about the dangers confront- 



Published in "Science," September 17, 1920, p. 264. 



