36 



be done in the way of artificial impregnation or hatching, as 

 nature has done for the black bass all that could be done. 



All that the fish-culturist needs to do is to stock all suitable 

 waters with them, where they do not now exist, and then pro- 

 tect them during the spawning season. 



Cascade, Mich. 



Mr. Fred Mather announced that the reports of salmon 

 captures in the Hudson were increasing and that the river has 

 been proved to have all the conditions necessary for a good 

 salmon river, except fishways to enable the fish to surmount 

 the dams and natural obstacles between Troy and the spawning 

 grounds. In 1880 he had suggested to Prof. Baird that it was 

 possible that this river was not a salmon river because the 

 present fish had been debarred from the spawning grounds by 

 natural obstructions before the settlement of the country, and 

 that the trout streams near its source afford all the facilities for 

 rearing young salmon, and in 1882 Mr. Mather hatched and 

 planted 225,000 Penobscot salmon in Warren County. Every 

 year since that plantings of increased numbers have been made 

 from the Long Island hatchery under his supervision. This 

 spring 440,000 were planted in the tributaries of the Hudson, 

 in Warren County, and 20,000 on Long Island. In 1886 there 

 was recorded ten salmon from the Hudson ; in 1887 the 

 number increased to between fifty and sixty, while this year 

 over two hundred have already been taken, ranging in weight 

 from six to twenty pounds. He had no doubt but the largest 

 number of salmon taken were not heard of, but " North river 

 salmon" was now a frequent sign in New York markets. 

 While it is unlawful to capture these fish in the Hudson by any 

 means excepting with hook and line, the fact that the gill- 

 netters who drift for shad take many which are drowned before 

 they reach them renders the law inoperative. Just before he 

 left New York, Mr. Blackford told him of a fisherman at 

 Yonkers who caught one but did not know what it was ; he cut 

 it open and it "looked red and unwholesome," and he threw it 

 away. Now the fisherman is daily reminded of his mistake by 

 his friends who ask if he has any red or diseased fish. 



