Sixth Annual Meeting. 57 



and sent to the market, and the eggs, which would otherwise be 

 disposed of as offal, would be taken care of in the breeding- 

 houses, making a clear saving of those eggs, which would 

 otherwise be totally lost. I think, therefore, that it would 

 hardly be proper to pass a law that the fish should not be 

 caught during the spawning season, because, if you do, it would 

 annihilate the fishing altogether. 



One great benefit has accrued as the result of this Associa- 

 tion, and the United States Government, having taken up the 

 question of the fisheries, which is the great interest Prof. Baird 

 has taken in bringing from the Pacific coast the California 

 salmon, and planting it in the waters of the Atlantic. That 

 is a subject of the highest possible importance, not only to 

 gentlemen connected with this Association, but to the country 

 at large. It was an effort in the right direction, and I think 

 it will produce a beneficial effect. I have had the pleasure of 

 getting some of those eggs for the last three years from Prof. 

 Baird, which I have planted in this stream, passing where my 

 establishment is, and last autumn fish of considerable size 

 came back in the stream along with these other salmon, which 

 turned out to be California salmon, weighing about three 

 pounds. Whether any record exists in any city in the Union of 

 California salmon of that size having been seen, and having 

 come back by their own natural migration to the place of their 

 breeding, I do not know. If there is, I would like to hear of it. 

 Here is the result, that the California salmon has become accli- 

 mated there, and has come back fish weighing three pounds in 

 the course of three years, for those fish must have been the first 

 eggs I received from Prof. Baird; and if you can in three years, 

 in Lake Ontario, where there is no salt water at all, rear fish 

 capable of rearing there yet — for this was sufficiently advanced 

 to reproduce — this may be regarded as an indication of what 



