PERSONAL FISH-CULTURAL REMINISCENCES 



By Frank N. Clark 



The President's introduction was a little embarrassing 

 in some respects. I do not wish to take the honors from 

 any one. Mr. Nevin has had a long life in active fish cul- 

 ture, and there is no one that knows it better than I or our 

 President. In fact, along the lines in which we have all 

 three worked, and they have been similar of course, I do 

 not think that I am egotistical at all when I say that we 

 are probably three of the men that have been the most 

 active for thirty to forty years. 



The first fish egg that I hatched antedated Mr. Nevin's 

 but very little. In the winter of 1865-66, in connection 

 with my father, I succeeded in hatching and rearing one 

 trout to be three months old. That was the total output 

 for the first season. 



Since that date I have been connected with hatcheries 

 that have turned out as many as 600,000,000 eggs in a 

 season — no, I will not say turned out, but collected — prob- 

 ably 450,000,000 fry or thereabouts were turned out. 



I was rather young when I began, nothing but a mere 

 boy, and during the earlier years probably Mr. Nevin de- 

 voted more time to the work than I did. Of course, my 

 work was private, in connection with my father's work; I 

 was in the hatchery during the winter and at other times I 

 was otherwise engaged. 



Sometimes I think that the younger men of the commis- 

 sions, and the younger men of the Society, do not realize 

 what the pioneers in fish culture went through. Take, for 

 instance, Seth Green, Mr. Wilmot, and my father. It was 

 practically the starting. Of course, it is true that there 

 were one or two others that had hatched some fish before 

 that time. But those three were really the pioneers in pre- 

 senting fish culture to the American people — there is no 



