26 



and hatching it, as it was performed by Mr. Smith, at Hadley Falls, the 

 past season. The seines are drawn only at night, and there are three 

 hauls made between eight and twelve o'clock, at intervals of almost 

 an hour, because it is found that no ripe shad are taken by day. From 

 one to two hundred fish were taken at each haul, the female fish increas- 

 hm with the lateness of the hour. As soon as the shad were hauled 

 to the shore, they were taken in large baskets to the pan, where they 

 were stripped. Two men held the fish over the pan, while Mr. Smith 

 stripped the most of them in less than a minute each. Some of the 

 males were not ripe, and were not stripped at all. As fast as they 

 were finished tliey were thrown into the pan and sold to hucksters, 

 whose wagons were waiting for them. The fishing had ceased at all 

 the places below, and the spawners were very plenty. The milt was 

 brought into contact with the spawn by gentle stirring with the hand, 

 and the contact of the two was so instantaneous, after the emission from 

 the parent fisli, that few eggs could escape impregnation. The eggs 

 swell immediately after impregnation from 9-100 to 13-100 of an inch 

 in diameter, nearly doubling their bulk in the vessel. Another very 

 curious fact is the sudden sinking of the temperature of the water, 

 about ten degrees, in which the eggs are suspended. After the eggs 

 have remained a half hour or more in the pans, they are carefully 

 washed and placed in the hatching boxes, which are suspended in long 

 rows from a boom fastened across the current of the river. 



From what has actually been accomplished in the Hudson, the 

 Connecticut and the Merrimac, there can be no reasonable doubt 

 about the restoration of shad to all our depleted and barren rivers 

 upon the Atlantic coast. I think we have every reason to expect that 

 the great rivers of the Missouri and Mississippi valley can be abund- 

 antly supplied with this fish. A pioneer movement was made in this 

 direction some twenty years ago, by Dr. N. C. Daniell of Savannah, 

 Ga., and an account of it was given by him to the Academy of Natu- 

 ral Sciences in Philadelphia, and is found in their proceedings. He 

 says : " Having long doubted the generally received theory of the 

 annual migration south from the northern seas of the white shad, and 

 of the consequent annual migi*ation this way of the young fry 

 hatched from the eggs deposited by their parents in our fresh-water 

 streams, I made inquiry of our fishermen, and learned that minute 

 but distinctive differences were readily detected between the white 

 shad taken in the Savannah river and those taken in the Ogeechee 

 river, eighteen miles south of the Savannah. Fully satisfied of this 

 fact, I readily concluded that the young shad that descend to the sea 



