138 A^nerican Fisheries Society. 



ing to feed at the present time is shad. We had an appropriation of 

 $10,000 for studying the shad situation and a scientific staff has been 

 working on that all summer. Dr. Moore was borrowed early in the 

 season and gave us a great deal of assistance; we hope to have her 

 again next spring. She can tell you about the natural food of the shad. 

 We had some ponds in which shad were said to have been reared many 

 years ago, and it happened that during the period that those ponds were 

 stocked with shad the statistics of the commercial fisheries rose so 

 rapidly that the commercial fishermen, now that shad fishery is about 

 gone, keep harking back to what was done at that time. My exper- 

 ience in Washington and in New York had satisfied me, however, that 

 any attempts to raise shad in ponds was doomed to failure. I was 

 rather slow about going back to shad rearing in Connecticut, but we 

 planted about 300,000 shad in a pond of about ten acres. They did very 

 well, apparently, until they were about an inch and a half long. Shad 

 caught in the rivers where they are spawning, the tributaries of the 

 Connecticut and in the Connecticut River itself, are about twice that 

 length, some of them four inches long. The last time we took speci- 

 mens from this pond we found that they were going back; they were 

 slim, weak and apparently starving; and we found that the particular 

 species of plankton upon which they were known to feed were entirely 

 exhausted. The first of last week we started in dragging for plankton 

 in another lake with a view to transferring it to this pond in an attempt 

 to save these fish. We are also feeding cracker crumbs, and we are 

 using some dried shrimp, thinking that if they do not eat the shrimp 

 they might eat some food developed by it. We have a scientist follow- 

 ing up this work, taking specimens of young shad to see whether, for 

 instance, they are eating crackers or whether they are eating the shrimp: 

 it is an attempt to follow up this work of feeding shad through the 

 season in order to see what the actual results from feeding are. 



Mr. Hare: At our station at Manchester, Iowa, one of the most 

 complete tests in connection with feeding is being made at the present 

 time that I have ever had any knowledge of. We have there a young 

 man from the western biological station, working under the direction 

 of Dr. Davis. I have never seen any man more devoted to his duties: 

 he reports promptly at eight o'clock in the morning and never quits 

 work until the evening. He has experimented with thirteen different 

 sorts of food, and the tests made are very complete indeed. I am not 

 in a position to state results, but when the next Convention meets a 

 report will be submitted on that very subject, and I am confident that 

 it will be one of the most complete reports on feeding experiments 

 that we have ever had. 



I want to add this: if there is anything that will beat hearts for 

 trout, I would like someone to bring it to me. If you feed your beef 

 hearts until the fish are seven weeks old and make a gradual change to 

 sheep's liver, you will produce the goods. If we do not send out 

 seven carloads of as fine fish as ever flipped a tail this year, I will eat my 

 hat. 



