Sixth Annual Meeting. 95 



the advantages fish culturists would derive from this would be 

 very great. We should not then devote our entire attention and 

 appetites to a few elasses of fish. The supply might then keep 

 nearer to the demand. There would be more breathing-time, 

 as it were, allowed for the fish, which this Association is 

 directing its attention to — those fish which, by means of artificial 

 propagation, we trust to fill our streams with. In fact just now, 

 from our tendency to waste, we are very much like children, 

 eating our cake and wanting it all the time. 



The President : In that connection, gentlemen, I might call 

 your attention to the fact that some of you perhaps are not aware 

 of, although I see some gentlemen around me who probably can 

 go back in their recollection as far as I can ; but in my early 

 days such a thing as eating a soft-clam was unknown. Nobody 

 ever ate a soft-clam at all. They called it a piss-clam. Now 

 we all know it is infinitely better than any other clam, and 

 ranks both in quality and price with the oyster. 



Mr. Blackford : They are $2 a hundred for extra large ones. 



The President : When I was a boy they were utterly worth- 

 less ; no one touched them at all except some few colored 

 gentlemen on Long Island. They seem to be the pioneers in 

 such things ; they eat horse-foot crabs, which no white man has 

 eaten yet that I know of. 



We have with us a representative from the other side of the 

 water, a country that is celebrated throughout Europe as prob- 

 ably being the most productive of salmon of any there, equalling 

 almost, if not fully equalling, our own streams — the country of 

 Norway. I would be very happy if Mr. Walheim would favor 

 us with an account of the fisheries of that country. 



Mr. Walheim : Mr. President, I am not accustomed to use 

 the English language, and it will be difficult for me to explain 

 my thoughts, but I will try as best I can. In regard to the 



