27 



never go so far from the mouth of the river as to lose their connection 

 with it, and that they ascend in the spring the same river which they 

 had descended as young tish the previous summer. Then the feed- 

 ing ground, so to speak, is in or near the mouth of the river. If the 

 young shad does attain its growth at the mouth of the Savannah and 

 of the Ogeechee rivers, may there not be equally good feeding grounds 

 at the mouth of the Alabama and other rivers flowing into the Gulf 

 of Mexico? To solve this question, I, with the aid of ni}- friend. 

 Mart. A. Cooper, Esq, whose residence on the Etowah river, in Bar- 

 bon county, supplied an eligible locality for the experiment, in the 

 early summer of 1848 had placed in a small tributary of the Etowah 

 river the fecundated eggs of the white shad, which I had myself 

 carefully prepared at ray plantation on the Savannah river, ten miles 

 above this tiity, from living j3arents. These eggs so deposited by 

 Major Cooper, were daily visited by him until they had all hatched. 

 In 1851 or 1852 the white shad were taken in the lish traps at the 

 foot of the falls of the Alabama, at Wetumpka, and of the Black 

 Warrior, near Tuscaloosa. 



" Through the kindness of a friend at Montgomery, Ala., a shad taken 

 from the Alabama river was sent to Prof. Holbrook of Charleston, 

 S. C, who pronounced it the white shad of our Atlantic streams. 

 They have gradually increased in quantity since they iirst appeared, 

 and have, year by year, increased in size, until they are now equal to 

 the best Savannah river shad. 



" The white shad have chiefly been taken in the traps at the foot of 

 the fall at Wetumpka, and near Tuscaloosa. One, I am infoi-raed, has 

 been taken from a trap at the head of the Coosa river, near Rome, 

 in this State ; and only some sixty miles below the locality in which 

 the eggs were deposited by Major Cooper in a tributary of tb.e Etowah 

 river ; I also learn that some few have been taken with a dip net 

 near Selma. 



'• I think we may safely conclude that the white shad may be as suc- 

 cessfully established in the Mississippi river as it has been in the 

 Alabama. Since feeding grounds for that delicious flsh exist at the 

 mouth of one river flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, may they not 

 exist at the mouths of other or all the rivers discharging into that 

 sea? Time must answer that question." 



I think there can be very little doubt of the success of the effort 

 to establish shad in all the streams that empty into the gulf. They 

 are in the same latitude with tlie shad streams of the Atlantic coast, 

 and can hardly be more muddy than the Alabama. If the shad can 



