SALMONID.E. 71 



fresh running water, can raise, in the space of a few weeks or months, 

 an indefinite number of young fish, of any of these varieties, which, 

 during the first week or ten days, can be removed to any distance that 

 can be reached in that time and, in these days of steam velocity, 

 what distance cannot be reached ? in any cask, jar, or other vessel, 

 capable of containing a few gallons of water. 



There would not, in this manner be the smallest difficulty, and very 

 small trouble or expense, in translating the Mackinaw Salmon and the 

 Siskawitz Trout from Lake Huron and Superior, to the inland waters 

 of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania not the smallest diffi- 

 culty in introducing the true Salmon from the Penobscot or the St. 

 John, to any lake, river, or stream, in the Middle States ; and, it 

 having been proved by the experiments of Mr. Upton, in Lilymere, 

 as recorded above, that the Salmon will live and preserve its excel- 

 lence in fresh-water, entirely debarred from egress to the sea, would 

 it not be a highly interesting, and, if successful, valuable, experiment, 

 to attempt its introduction into the hundreds of limpid lakelets which 

 gem the inlands and uplands of our Northern States ? 



Again, as it is well known that all the migratory fish, like the birds 

 of passage, return, whenever it is possible, to the streams wherein they 

 were themselves bred, to breed, it seems to me that it would be well 

 worth the trying whether these streams of ours here, to the southward 

 of Maine, which, within a century or two, teemed with Salmon, but in 

 which one is now never seen, might not be colonized and restocked 

 with the delicious fish. 



There is no plausible reason why the pinks which should be trans- 

 ported to the upper Hudson, and should there remain till they become 

 smolts, should not return as grilse to the scenes of their childhood. 



Nor do I see any good reason why they should not continue to breed, 

 and to frequent any river into which they should be so introduced. 



The cause of their desertion of these rivers is inexplicable. It has 

 been attributed to steamboats, but that is ideal ; for the Tay, the 

 Tweed, and the Clyde, and half-a-dozen other English and Scottish 

 rivers, which still abound in Salmon, are harassed by more steam- 

 boats, hourly, than are the Kennebeck and Penobscot now, or than 

 were the Hudson and Connecticut at the time when the Salmon for- 

 sook them, daily 



