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Hacking. I fear, however, from private information, that 

 the scheme is likely to be starved owing to- the reckless ex- 

 travagance which has gone on in other directions. The 

 N.S.W. scheme, you will observe, includes fish acclimatization, 

 an experiment not yet tried, so far as I am aware, in Aus- 

 tralasia except in the case of fresh water fish, but an experi- 

 ment which may yield results of great interest and impor- 

 tance. You may not be aware of the extent to which fish 

 hatching and the replenishment of sea fish has been carried 

 in the Northern Hemisphere. Let me quote again from Mr. 

 Dannevig's lecture : ''Sea fish hatcheries have been established 

 in America, Scotland, England, Newfoundland, Canada, and 

 Norway, and the work accomplished fro^m year to year in these 

 various places is well worth noting. In 1898 the various 

 hatcheries in the United States of America produced not less 

 tha.n 857,500,000 fry of different kinds of fish; in 1901 the 

 Canadian hatcheries produced 203,500,000 of fry, while the 

 single hatchery in Norway has been able to develop as many 

 as 400,000,000 fry in one season." The writer in the ''Con- 

 temporary" quotes a letter from one of the U.S. Fishery Com- 

 missioners to the following effect: — ''The result obtained in 

 this country by the artificial propagation of food fishes has 

 not only been encouraging, but is phenomenal. No person 

 informed on the subject now disputes the fact that the futur© 

 of oiu' fisheries must depend for its prosperity in a measiire 

 on artificial methods of hatching. The chad fishery, which 

 has become depleted to a remarkable extent, has, by artificial 

 propagation, steadily increased, and amounts to upwards of a 

 million dollars a year, notwithstanding the fact that the 

 abundance has made it possible for fishermen to' sell at lower 

 prices than formerly. These fish have been introduced on 

 the Pacific Coast, where they were indigenous, and they have 

 multiplied to such an extent along hundreds of miles of coast 

 that they are now common fish in the markets. As regards 

 the cod, it is only recently that this work has begun, but now 

 they are found in enormous abimdance in the neighborhood 

 of our hatcheries in many places where they had never pre- 

 viously been seen in the memory of the oldest fishermen, and 

 in such numbers that a profitable fishery has been maintained 

 from them by a fleet of small vessels. The fishermen con- 

 fidently look forward to seeing a fishery built up off the New 

 England shore in the near future which will be beyond any- 

 thing man now living ever witnessed." Surely statements 

 such as these should awaken the powers that, be to the possi- 

 bilities of the future as regards the supply of cheap, whole- 

 some food, to say nothing of the resulting increase in revenue 



