84 FISH-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
The other chief river of New England, the Connecticut, was 
the scene of the first artificial hatching of the shad. With the 
encouragement of the Massachusetts Commissioners, Seth 
Green, of New York, began, in the summer of 1867, his experi- 
ments in shad hatching at Holyoke. His simple and ingenious 
invention of a hatching box, which kept up a constant current 
by floating, not horizontally but at an angle, has become a mat-_ 
ter of familiar history. Great was the ridicule directed against 
Green, as he painfully waded about in the river under the hot 
June sun. But when, a few seasons later, the shad appeared in 
unusual numbers at the mouth of the river, ridicule was changed 
to admiration, and the great crop of that year was called 
‘NGreenisishad:”’ 
In the following year, 1868, shad- hatching was established on 
the Merrimac and daily record was kept of the temperature of 
thevair and.water, of the number and sex:of the ‘fish takensienu 
the quantity of eggs hatched. ‘These tables were the first of the 
kind published in this country. 
The progress of this slight sketch has brought us to the ques- 
tion which underlies the subject of fish-culture in its broadest 
sense; it is the question of the possible exhaustion of great fish- 
eries, and especially those of the sea. 
We have seen that soon after the first settlement of the coun- 
try, complaints of the decrease of fish began to arise. It is very 
likely that these complaints came rather from the accidental 
differences of seasons than from any real decrease. Neverthe- 
less, they indicate that the relation between overfishing and de- 
crease of the crop was one that was early suggested to our peo- 
ple. The entire subject was brought into prominence in our 
own day by the report of the’ English Commissioners to inquire 
into the sea fisheries of the United Kingdom in 1864. Of these 
Commissioners it has been said: “‘ Their industry was so extra- 
ordinary, and the piles of evidence were such as to leave the im- 
pression that every fish-wife in the three kingdoms had had her 
say. The trawlers were vehement against the set-hook men, and 
the set-hook men were furious against the trawlers. The Com- 
mission decided that they all were right, and might fish when, 
how and where they pleased. But just then Mr. Bertram comes 
