REPORT. 



Your Commissioners, in pursuance of the plan contemplated in their 

 last report, pi'oceeded to open correspondence with the most noted fish 

 culturists in the East, and also with the United States Fish Commis- 

 sioner, at Washington City, upon the subject of obtaining an additional 

 8U]iply of shad, and also a large variety of other food fishes, from the 

 Eastern lakes and sea coast. 



By the kindness of the United States Commissioner of Fisheries, the 

 Hon. Spencer F. Baird, we were allowed to avail ourselves of the ser- 

 vices of Mr. Livingstone Stone, attached to the United States Commis- 

 sion, and engaged in transferring salmon eggs from California to the 

 waters flowing into the Atlantic. Mr. Stone's high reputation as a suc- 

 cessful bi-eeder of fish, as well as a writer upon the subject of piscicul- 

 ture, not only gave us confidence in the success of the enterprise, but 

 also led us to enlarge and amplify the scope and range of the under- 

 taking. 



In this view, Ave made arrangements with Mr. Stone, for him to pro- 

 ceed to the Eastern States, and there collect a supply of shad, eels, 

 black bass, white fish, tautogs, striped bass, blue fish, and lobsters. 



To carry into effect these plans, we chartered fi-om the Central Pacific 

 Bailroad Company a special car, to be placed at our disposal at a given 

 point at the East, and there to await the necessary time for being fitted 

 up for the purpose, and to receive its freight of living fish. All the 

 requisite arrangements i'or the tiansit of this car over the different lines 

 of roads, as well as for its necessary sto])page8 and delaj's at different 

 points where fish were to be taken in, had been most completely made 

 b}' our colleague, Mr. B. B. liedding, through the agency of the different 

 railroad managers; and, on the seventeenth day of March, eighteen hun- 

 dred and seventy three, Mr. Stone left San Francisco, to carry out, if 

 possible, the plan of your Commissioners, to transport a carload of liv- 

 ing fish from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. 



lieferring to this expedition, Mr. Stone says: 



"In accordance with instructions received from the Fish Commis- 

 sioners of the State of California, I left San Francisco for the Eastern 

 coast, on the seventeenth day of March, eighteen hundred and seventy- 

 three, for the purpose of procuring a stock of the best varieties of East- 

 ern fish, and transporting them, alive, across the continent, with a view 

 to introducing these varieties into the public waters of California. 



