78 FISH-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
call it Taunton Small River, for it is a small stream, which heads 
in some ponds in the town of Lakeville, and after a short and 
quiet course empties into the sea at Fall River. But not the 
mighty Mississippi itself bears on its bosom so great a mass of 
legislation. The great and general Court of Massachusetts in- 
variably spends a portion of each session in trying to regulate 
the fisheries of this stream. The fishermen of the upper waters 
always complain that those of the lower waters get all the ale- 
wives, while those of the lower waters maintain that their rivals 
feloniously conspire to shut the fish off from their spawning 
grounds. And when by some special providence, both sets of 
fishermen are at peace with one another, they invariably make a 
combined attack upon the regulations of the State Fish Commis- 
sioners. The riparian inhabitants of other alewife streams, al- 
though not so.combative, are quite as much interested as those 
of Taunton Great River. Indeed it was in such waters that a 
sort of fish-culture first grew up. In some cases, where a dam 
owner wished to save his water power by shutting up his fish- 
way, he would agree to catch each year so many thousand ale- 
wives at the foot of the dam,and to convey them alive to the mill 
pond above, and thus to keep up the crop. And it has been the 
custom for more than a century to regulate these little streams 
by special acts which govern the public sale of the fish, the days 
on which they may be netted, and the fishways that are to be 
kept opén for their passage. The law goes often so far into de- 
tail as to provide that each widow of the town shall have a bar- 
rel full for nothing. I have dwelt thus long on this humble fish, 
because its successful culture gives encouragement to attempt 
that of others more difficult. 
I shall follow briefly the decline of the fisheries in New Eng- 
land, because it is there that an organized system of fish-culture 
first in this country took its origin. That region has two rivers 
of considerable size—the Connecticut and the Merrimac. Both 
rise in the cold streams of the White Mountains. The Connec- 
ticut, flowing south, empties into Long Island Sound, and the 
Merrimac, by a southeasterly course, reaches the Atlantic Ocean. 
A century ago both rivers abounded in shad, salmon and. ale- 
wives, and would doubtless have continued for many years to 
