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domains of insect and vegetable life is found the vast possible increase 

 from generation to generation that exists in the culture of fish. 

 For a good illustration of the possibilities in this direction, we might 

 take the ease of the Sturgeon, which is said to deposit three million eggs 

 each season. Supposing that the embryo in all these eggs should hatch 

 out and mature into full-grown fish, and that each pair of these, whea 

 matured, should produce a similar number of offspring, what would be 

 the result? It would be, that in two generations forty-five hundred 

 thousand million Sturgeon would be brought into the world, or enough 

 fish, when grown to an average size and placed lengthwise in a line, to 

 reach one hundred and fifty thousand times around the world, or, with 

 an average weight of one hundred pounds apiece, to make two hundred 

 and twenty-five thousand million tons of fish. This, of course, is merely 

 a conceivable, and, very fortunately, not a practicable example, but it 

 strikingly illustrates the almost fabulous rate of possible increase in the 

 generation of fishes. 



It is this feature of it which forms one of the special merits of fish 

 culture, and one of its strongest claims to public attention and support. 

 A consideration, hardly less forcible in its favor, is the circumstance 

 that the growth and increase of the fish cost the community nothing 

 after they are once fairly introduced into suitable waters. Legislatures 

 are not obliged to pass appropriations to provide food for the fish, or 

 inclosures within which to confine them. After a river or lake is once 

 properly stocked with a valuable variety of fish, then all expense ceases. 

 The fish have natural inclosures. Nature supplies their food, and man 

 is relieved from an}- further trouble about them. This very simple fact, 

 that the fishes cause no expense or trouble to the community, has an 

 importance which is not generally recognized. To bring this out more 

 fully, I will present one illustrious example — the Salmon of the Columbia 

 Eiver. The annual Salmon yield of this river, as is well known, is 

 enormous. In eighteen hundred and seventy-four there were put up 

 and exported from the Columbia Eiver, upwards of twenty million 

 pounds of canned Salmon, We will say that half as much more was 

 cured or eaten fresh. This makes a total of thirty million pounds of 

 fish-food furnished by one river alone. Now, the whole thirty million 

 pounds of food has not cost the community a single dollar for its raising 

 or keeping. Eating the Salmon at an average price of twenty cents a 

 pound, we have six million dollars worth of food produced without the 

 cost of a dollar to mankind, either for rent of grounds, for inclosures, 

 for care, or for food. The subsistence required to sustain this enormous 

 amount of fish does not even make any diminution whatever of the 

 resources of the community. They get their food entirely in the sea, 

 where it costs no one anything, and where it is not even missed. 



This instance illustrates, in a striking way, what is true of all varieties 

 of fishes, and brings out a point in fish culture the value of which can 

 be hardly overestimated. The Fish Commissioners, when they give 

 the community living fishes in return for their appropriations, give them 

 once for all, and pay the bills once for all. The fish become at once a 

 portion of the public property, in regard to which all expenditures are 

 at an end. The community will not have to feed the fish, or take care 

 of them, or do anything more about it, except to take out the fish as 

 they are wanted. Even if the eiforts of the Fish Commissioners, in 

 many instances, are failures, it will cost the State or country nothing 



