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gauze bottom, and steadied in the water by two float-bars, screwed to 

 its sides. These float-bars are attached, not parallel to the top line 

 of the box, but at an angle to it, wliich makes the box float with one 

 end tilted up, and the current striking the gauze bottom at an angle, 

 is deflected upwards, and makes such a boiling within as keeps the 

 light shad eggs constantly free and buoyed up. The result was a 

 triumph. Out of 10,000 placed in this contrivance, all but seven 

 hatched. In spite of these delays, and the imperfect means at hand 

 for taking the fish, Green succeeded in hatching and setting free many 

 millions of these tiny fry." 



This simple contrivance of Green's is one of the most important 

 discoveries of modern times. Its grandeur will be much better 

 understood ten years hence, when it shall have been applied to all 

 our shad streams, and the yield shall have been increased, some 

 thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred fold. We do not see 

 why the increase may not. be, under favorable circumstances, a 

 hundred fold. In the natural process not one egg in a thou- 

 sand comes to life. By artificial propagation nearly ninety-nine 

 per cent are hatched, and thus the most perilous time in the 

 shad's life — the embryo period — is bridged over. It is estimated, 

 by those who have carefully studied tlie subject, that one-fourth of the 

 fry bred in a stream return from the sea. If anything like this pro- 

 portion escape the perils of the sea, the task of filling our rivers with 

 shad is an easy one. The fry are now hatched at a cost not to exceed 

 ten dollars a million, and the process will become very much cheap- 

 ened as the parent fish become more plenty. The process as yet has 

 only been fairly applied in the Hudson and Connecticut rivers; and 

 with more spavvners and more money ten times as many fish could be 

 turned into these streams every year. Only a small part of the breed- 

 ing grounds of either of these rivers has been opened. Yet, with the 

 limited application of this discovery made the past five years, there 

 has been a glut of this fish in the markets where they were sold, the 

 finest fish selling for ten cents each. If the State Legislatures will 

 but place sufticient funds at the disposal of our Fish Commissioners, 

 every stream on the Atlantic seaboard can be so filled with shad that 

 they will sell at all the fisheries for one cent a pound within the next 

 ten years. This cannot fail to afffect the price of all other fish, and 

 all other animal food. Cheap food under our institutions means the 

 elevation of all the laboring classes, a great increase of their comforts 

 and luxuries, and the improvement of their social and moral condition. 



We had the pleasure of witnessing the process of taking the spawn 



