173 



DISCUSSION. 



Professor BROWN GOODE (United States Commis- 

 sioner) said he had listened with very great interest to the 

 Paper which Mr. Milne Home had presented, and he rose 

 to say a few words, which were perhaps invited by the 

 closing sentences of the address, concerning what America 

 had been doing in the way of salmon culture. He was 

 led to do that by the fact that certain documents had been 

 distributed from Canada, which had rather a tendency to 

 depreciate what had been done in fish culture, not only in 

 Europe, but in the United States. It had been said that 

 fish culture was only an experiment, and had not been 

 attended with commercial success : he, however, wished to 

 say that it was in no sense an experiment, but that in the 

 United States and in Canada it had been a decided success, 

 and was so recognised by every one. It was not likely 

 that the American Congress, or the Canadian Government, 

 would for a period of ten or twelve years keep on making 

 annual appropriations for fish culture if they were not 

 satisfied that it was not only a success from a scientific 

 stand-point, but a success from a commercial point of 

 view. In the United States the general Government had 

 appropriated considerably more than a million dollars, and 

 the individual States a sum almost as great. Up to 1798 

 large numbers of salmon were caught in the Connecticut 

 river, but until 1870 the fish disappeared entirely from 

 the river, and until about 1875 no salmon whatever were 

 seen in the river. In 1875, however, the salmon began 

 to appear, and this was the direct result of the planting of 

 a large number of eggs in that river three or four years 

 previously. Then again in the case of Sacramento River 



