38 
methods or apparatus that experience has shown to be 
unnecessarily wasteful or destructive. Whether we can 
rely entirely upon artificial propagation to compensate 
for the destruction effected through the agency of man, 
I am strongly inclined to doubt. The value of this re- 
source as a sufficient means of maintaining production 
and at the same time imposing little or no restraint upon 
the fishing enterprises is very forcibly illustrated by the 
history of the shad fisheries of the Atlantic coast rivers 
since 1880. This is a species which must find access to 
the fresh waters of the rivers in order to accomplish re- 
production. Where the streams are unobstructed it 
pushes its way up hundreds of miles from tidewater in 
order to find suitable spawning grounds. It does not 
spawn in the brackish or salt waters, and if it did the 
eggs would prove infertile. Under the present condi- 
tions of the shad fisheries, but a very small proportion 
of the shad approaching our rivers under the constraint 
of reproduction ever find their way to their spawning 
grounds in the rivers. Fully eighty per cent. are taken 
in the brackish water of the estuaries of our rivers or on 
the shores of the ocean or the great bays which indent 
the shore line. Under these conditions, we are compell- 
ed to depend largely, if not entirely upon artificial pro- 
pagation to repair the annual waste by natural casuali- 
ties and the fisheries. This great fishery is under con- 
ditions as artificial as is the corn or the wheat crop. Its 
permanence and such marked improvement as has taken 
place since 1880 in the annual value of the product is 
unquestionably to be attributed to the extensive 
measures. of artificial propagation which have 
been conducted ,with this species by the Fish 
Commissions of the different States on the Atlantic 
Sea Board and by the United States Fish Com- 
mission. 
Since 1885 there has been a steady and progressive 
increase in the annual value of the shad taken on the 
eee LU 
