6o 



the best fish those waters could produce, they ought to be 

 confined to them ; at any rate, if large sums of money 

 were spent, either by private individuals or the public, in 

 introducing new fish and in improving the fisheries of the 

 water, there ought to be some means by which ill-natured 

 persons could be prevented turning in rapacious fish, and 

 thus in a short time undoing the work of years. Either 

 the Local Fisheries Board or the Home Office should have 

 some authority or power to say what fish should be turned 

 into the waters, and he hoped that some regulation of this 

 sort would be one of the useful results which would follow 

 from the Conference. 



Professor G. BROWN GoODE (U.S. Commissioner) said 

 said he should be pleased to give a few figures illustrating 

 what fish culture could do. Professor Baird (U.S. Com- 

 missioner) informed him that the Sacramento River, Cali- 

 fornia, was, owing to the large number of canneries there, 

 to a large extent depleted of its Salmon ; but by the 

 establishment of a hatchery there he had turned out some- 

 thing like sixty-seven millions of eggs or young fry of the 

 Californian Salmon in the past eight or nine years, one- 

 fourth of which were put into the Sacramento River, and 

 it was now much more productive than ever before, On 

 the Clacamass, in Oregon, a similar experiment was tried 

 some years ago with a like result. These experiments had 

 clearly shown that the Salmon industry of the Pacific 

 Coast, which was now producing fish to the value of some- 

 thing like three million dollars a day, was thoroughly under 

 the control of fish culture. He might also take the case of 

 the Connecticut, in the last century, which was one of the 

 most productive rivers ; but by the construction of a great 

 dam, 60 miles above its mouth, the Salmon were cut off 

 from the spawning ground, and for very nearly ninety 



