CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME 47 



from forty to eighty days, depending upon its temperature, the young trout make 

 their appearance. They require no food for the first thirty days, the yolk sack of 

 the egg, which is attached to them, affording nourishment during this period. After 

 this. the Messrs. Comer feed them on finely chopped liver until they are sufficiently 

 large to be turned into the ponds, where they are fed upon any kind of coarse meat 

 or fish, finely chopped. Trout will live and thrive in water of a temperature between 

 forty and sixty-five degrees. This is about the only question to be settled by persons 

 who desire to stock streams with trout. If the water in summer does not get 

 warmer than sixty-five degrees, the experiment may be tried with every probability 

 of success. The quality of the water does not seem to be material. They live and 

 thrive in water that is impregnated with minerals, and in salt water, and in artesian 

 well water, provided only the temperature is not too warm. Persons who live near 

 small lakes and streams, now without fish, and containing water of the proper tem- 

 perature, could, at trifling expense and care, provide themselves with a constant 

 supply of delicious and healthy food by hatching a few eggs, or by turning in a few 

 of the young fish. Both eggs and young fish aiv readily transported almost any 

 distance. Salmon eggs have been taken from Scotland to Australia and hatched, 

 and the Acclimatization Society of San Francisco has successfully imported the eggs 

 of the Eastern brook trout and hatched them in this State. It has been estimated 

 that an acre of water can be made to yield as much food as four acres of average 

 land. 



SHAD 



Your Commissioners made arrangements with Mr. Seth Green, the noted pisi- 

 culturist of Rochester, New York, for the importation of a lot of young shad to be 

 turned into the Sacramento River. X<> shad proper (alosa praestabilis) are found 

 in the rivers of the Pacific Coast, while there arc found several varieties of the same 

 family, such as herrings, anchovies, and sardines. As shad readily enter rivers 

 while muddy from the spring freshets, and spawn in water of a temperature as high 

 as sixty-five degrees, there was reason to hope that if the shad could be brought 

 lure alive and turned into the river they would find suitable food, and in time go to 

 the ocean and return to propagate their species. As the shad is very prolific, each 

 full grown female yielding from fifty to eighty thousand eggs, and as the flesh is 

 '•med to be nutritious and valuable food, it was deemed proper to make the first 

 experiment of importing new varieties with the young of this fish. The eggs of the 

 shad are hatched in from two to four days after they are spawned, therefore, if 

 there were no other reason, time alone would prevent the importation of the eggs. 



Mr. Green felt so much doubt as to the possibility of transporting the young 

 fish for so great a distance that he determined to superintend the experiment in 

  ii. He left Rochester, New York, with an assistant, on the twentieth of June, 

 with fifteen thousand of the young fish just hatched, contained in eight tin cans 

 holding about twelve gallons of water each. The water had to be changed at every 

 convenient opportunity, and as on a part <>f the journey the weather was quite warm, 

 constant attention had to be given to prevent the water in the cans from reaching 

 a higher temperature than eighty degrees. At Chicago he lost a few fish from a 

 film of oil from the machinery of the waterworks with which the water attempted 

 to be used was covered. At Omaha the river w-ater killed a few ; the cause of this 

 he had not time to investigate. The water of Bear River (discharging into Salt 

 Lake) and the waters of the Humboldt and Truckee rivers were found to agree 

 with them and containing plenty of food. Mr. Green arrived on the twenty-seventh 

 of June. As it was advisable to put the young fish in the river at as high a point 

 as was practicable, for the reason that the instinct of the shad is, like that of the 

 salmon, to return to spawn at the same place where it was hatched, they were the 

 same day transferred to the cars of the California and Oregon Railroad and taken 

 to the Sacramento River at Tehama. Here the temperature of the water was found 

 to be sixty degrees of Fahrenheit. Upon dipping up the river water in a glass and 

 pouring a lot of the young fish into it, they were found to be lively and the water 

 to contain large quantities of some minute substance on which they feed. All the 

 conditions being favorable, they were turned loose in their new home. It is expected 



