131 
river fish over dams or falls of any height and to 
effectually resist ice, drift logs, trees or stumps, ete. 
It cannot be carried away by freshets, unless the dam 
itself first gives way. It is also constructed so as nut to 
interfere with the permanency of the dam or efficiency 
of the water power and only in rare cases is it neces- 
sary to cut the obstruction or to remove a stone in it. 
This fishway is not a mere invention, thought out by 
a theorist who had but a vague idea of the numerous 
obstacles to be mastered, but is rather a growth, a 
detailed mastery of all the difficulties met with down 
in the rivers amongst the fish and the dams. It is the 
outcome of a quarter of a century’s personal experience, 
close observation and anxious effort. It leaves nothing 
to be desired in a successful fishway, which it is pos- 
sible to produce, therefore there is no need in longer 
spending money in fruitless experiments on theoretical 
and useless devices as in the past, but address ourselves 
to the more practical work of passing the fish up the 
stream as fast as possible. 

After the paper was read Mr. Gilbert said: Within 
the last twenty or twenty-five years there have been a 
great many fish-ways invented and devices to get fish up 
the rivers. JI have no doubt many of them have been 
successful. The State of Massachusetts put in a fish-way 
at Holyoke. We have also had very expensive fish-ways 
constructed at Lawrence, Manchester and all the falls. 
Yet the results, as given by the Massachusetts Fish Com- 
mission in their last report in relation to shad, which 
says, ‘‘ Returns show a catch of only 12,451 shad taken 
inland waters, a decrease from last year of over 2,000,” 
are not encouraging. Why is this? If we have these 
fish-ways, on which the State has expended large sums of 
money to build and maintain, and yet we have the mor- 
tifying result that the shad are decreasing, why is it? 
