A Glance at Fishculture. 15 



Shad only come to the rivers to breed. Those caught 

 for food when ripe are lost for that purpose unless the 

 fishculturist saver them, and he hatches millions which 

 would otherwise be lost. 



Again the Connecticut River. It was once a famous 

 salmon river. My grandfather has told me of seeing 

 his father, Joseph Mather, who rah a ferry from Lyme 

 to Saybrook, at the mouth of the river, over 125 years 

 ago, take so many salmon in his net that he could not 

 land them for fear of tearing the net, and part had to 

 be released. In the late 70*3 the salmon had not been 

 seen in the river for over a quarter of a century, and 

 the States above mentioned, in connection with Ver- 

 mont, New Hampshire and the United States, shared 

 the expense of restocking the river with salmon fry 

 from the Penobscot. The salmon fishery was restored 

 and in a few years Connecticut salmon were common 

 in the markets of New York, Boston and other cities. 

 Then came the old trouble about the nets at the mouth 

 of the river and the stocking ceased. The run of fish 

 kept up for two or three years afterward and Con- 

 necticut salmon were no longer caught. 



It is difficult to tell the results of fishculture in waters 

 where the fish which are bred have always existed, but 

 when a species is placed in water where it is not a na- 

 tive, and thrives there, the fishculturist can point to it 

 with pride. Shad and striped bass were unknown on 

 the Pacific coast until planted there over twenty years 

 ago, and now they are not only plenty in the Sacra- 

 mento River, where the plants were made, but shad 

 have strayed north and stocked waters as high up as 

 Puget Sound. Not only that, but Mr. Blackford has 

 seen shad in California which weighed as high as 16 

 pounds, while one of half that size is a monster on the 



