Buck. — Fishzvays for the Rank and File 111 



its course except this one place ; but that point "stuck" me, and J want 

 to ask if there is anybody here who can give me an answer based on 

 experience as to whether that would be an insurmountable obstacle. 



Mr. Buller: There is no doubt in my mind that the time is not 

 distant when practically all the streams in the state of Pennsylvania will 

 be a succession of dams : it will be done for the conservation of the 

 water, and I would like to ask whether the construction of these dams 

 will be any hindrance to such fish in the river as pickerel, pike and 

 bass, and the other fish that inhabit our rivers. 



Mr. Nevin: I claim they won't want fishways at all. 



Mr. Buller : I agree with you. I never saw a fish ascend a tishway 

 yet in a brook trout stream. In Broadhead's Lake, in Monroe County, 

 a stream about the width of this room (about 40 feet) there was an 

 8-foot dam constructed in that stream quite a good many years ago ; 

 and 1 have seen trout by the hundreds leap that eight feet and pass 

 on up the stream. The owner of that dam concluded that there should 

 be a fishway placed in it. There was a Cail fishway placed in it ; and I 

 have scrutinized it at the time when the fish were ascending the creek, 

 and I failed to see a single fish go up the fishway. As I say, I have 

 never yet seen a fishway that the fish ascend. 



But what 1 want to bring about is this: Knowing these conditions, 

 I would like to see that law taken off our statute books of Pennsylvania ; 

 and what I would like to learn is whether in your opinion it would have 

 any effect on such fish as the bass, pike, perch and catfish that are 

 natives of our waters, and whether it would make any difference 

 whether they had a fishway to go up or down or not? 



Mr. Fearing: The last thing we want a fishway for is eels. I 

 think it is a recognized fact, and has been for ten years, that the eel 

 brings forth its young in salt water; and it has been ascertained in 

 Germany to a certainty that distance is nothing to an eel. There arc 

 records in Germany of eels, on their way down to salt water in tin- 

 bearing season, having covered three, three and a half and four miles 

 of absolutely dry land. The old idea of eels procreating in fresh water 

 is exploded, and you cannot keep eels out. Most of us who are inter- 

 ested in the breeding of trout are looking for a way to keep eels out 

 and have never yet discovered how to do it. 



Mr. Buller: It is a well understood fact that eels will go probably 

 where no other fish will ; but we have failed to find any of them 

 ascending the Susquehanna River through this fishway. We have 

 found them on the rocks as high as 40 feet above the river, have found 

 them right on the face of the rock, wherever it was damp ; but this- 

 stream that is pouring over the dam is of such volume that it is im- 

 possible for them to ascend the river ; and the eel in the Susquehanna 

 River is a valuable food fish and supplies food, when it has the chance 

 to ascend the river, to a good many thousand people. But, of course, 

 we do not like them in our trout streams. 



