THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 21 
able pest. And above all must it be borne in mind, that when 
water is used that comes from rivers and lakes, like the Croton 
water of New York city, no matter how clear of fungus they 
may get their tanks or aquaria, the spores are in the water, and 
any wounds in the fishes, or decaying or dead matter which may 
at any time afterward get into the water, offer fertile fields for 
renewed growths, which can only be disposed of by a new resort 
to the salt wash. 
THE ARTIFICIAL. PROPAGATION OF SALMON IN 
THE COLUMBIA RIVER BASIN.* 
BY LIVINGSTON STONE. 
Every one has heard of the immense quantities of salmon that 
are annually canned on the Columbia river. It is not necessary 
to go into details. The general facts known to all prove that an 
enormous number of salmon have been accustomed to ascend 
the Columbia river every year, and it is probably safe to say that 
the Columbia has been the most productive salmon river in the 
world. 
This is one side of the subject. The other side is this: Such 
enormous quantities of salmon taken from a river must ulti- 
mately endanger the productiveness of it., The situation is not, 
however, quite as bad as it looks, for it seems at first sight as if 
the stock of a salmon river would be diminished in proportion 
to the number of salmon taken out of it, but this is not wholly 
true, for a compensating element of great weight comes in to 
disturb the calculation. Nature, perhaps more aptly speaking, 
Providence, in the case of fish, as well as numberless other 
creatures, produces great quantities of seed that nature does not 
utilize or need. It looks like a vast store that has been pro- 
vided for nature, to hold in reserve against the time when the 
*The salmon referred to in this paper is the Oncorhynchus chouzka, the spring salmon of 
the Columbia, the chinook salmon, quinnat salmon, the common salmon of the Sacramento 
river. 
