14 Fish Cultit rists Association. 



of the extent of the domestic yield of fish. The cod and mackerel 

 of the northern fisheries, which are imported, are recorded in 

 the returns of the Custom-houses, but the produce of our shore 

 and stream fisheries, and even of our great lakes, remains a 

 matter of guesswork instead of calculation. Nevertheless, any 

 one familar with the subject, who knows something of the 

 diminution in the past, and has seen the improvement here and 

 there effected by fish-ways in the present, can positively assert 

 that the destruction of fish by mill-dams amounts yearly to manv 

 millions of dollars. We pay Canada alone a million annually 

 for the privilege of eating salmon which once abounded in our 

 waters, and thousands of miles of shore fisheries have been cut 

 off in our land by dams. That these obstructions can be over- 

 come is being made clearer year by year ; there have been 

 mistakes in construction, errors of opinion as to the habits and 

 capacities of different species of the migratory fishes, but fish- 

 ladders are now constructed which meet all requisites, and which 

 not only salmon, but shad, herring, and alewives, have ascended, 

 although shad are exceedingly timid, and not to be tempted 

 where their distrust is aroused. As conspicuous instances of 

 the effect of opening additional spawning-ground, may be men- 

 tioned the Damariscotta River, in Maine, to the upper waters of 

 which alewives were admitted in 1806, and which has yielded 

 millions yearly since. And in Ireland, the river Corrib, in which 

 a fish-pass was erected in 1853, the yield of salmon being thereby 

 increased from sixteen hundred to over twenty thousand. Many 

 other instances could be presented, but these are enough to prove 

 that similar results may be anticipated from our later efforts. 



In America, advance has been made not alone in the mechan- 

 ical appliances of Fish Culture, but in the varieties of species to 

 which it has been adapted. Abroad, as I have said, attention was 

 paid mainly to the salmon, which was the most valuable species, 



