l899-'oo TRANSACTIONS 165 



and respected citizen of Ottawa, Mr. Richard Nettle. Stimu- 

 lated no doubt by recollections of famous streams in his native 

 Devonshire Mr. Nettle, as early as 1856 or 1857, began the 

 incubation of salmon and trout eggs for purposes of artificial 

 stocking, in hatching tanks in the City of Quebec. He disputed 

 the accuracy of the claim frequently put forward on behalf of 

 Mr. Wilmot. The Bishop of Ottawa, (Dr. Hamilton) incident- 

 ally confirmed the claim of Mr. Nettle in a recent conversation, 

 his lordship informing me that he himself saw the young fish and 

 the hatching arrangements about the time referred to. Mr. 

 Nettle was then Superintendent of Fisheries for lyower Canada. 

 From a report by the late Mr. Wilmot, dated Dec. 31st, 1878, it 

 appears that he commenced experiments in fish-hatching in 1865, 

 eight or nine years later than Mr. Nettle's experiments, and he 

 carried it on as a private enterprise until the Dominion Govern- 

 ment took the work over and gave M;. Wilmot an appointment 

 as a Government official. In 1866 Mr. Wilmot acted as a 

 fishery officer, with authority from the Government of Upper 

 Canada, and on May 30th, 1868, he became an officer under the 

 Department of Marine and Fisheries ; but it was not until eight 

 years later (1876) that he became Superintendent of Fish 

 Breeding. For his initial experiments he was paid, in 1869, the 

 suin of $2,000 by Order in Council. 



Thus fish-culture in Canada, at first a private enterprise on 

 a small scale, received a kind of semi-official sanction, but in 

 1868 it became distinctively a branch of the Dominion Govern- 

 ment service, the Newcastle Hatchery, possessed by Mr. 

 Wilmot, being transferred to the Department of Marine and 

 Fisheries. This hatchery, Mr. Wilmot affirmed, in his report 

 dated Feb. 3rd, 1875, " has been the nucleus from which all of 

 the National and State fish-breeding establishments in Canada 

 and the United States of America have taken their rise." Ad- 

 ditional hatcheries were soon built, the famous Restigouche 

 Salmon institution in 1872, (twice rebuilt), and the Miramichi 

 Hatchery in 1873. In 1874 the Gaspe Hatcher)^ was com- 

 menced, and in 1875 a large mill was purchased at Tadoussac 

 and converted into a fish-breeding establishment, supplanted by 

 a new building later. The work expanded, so that Mr. Wilmot, 

 in Feb. 1875, was able to speak of five hatcheries in Canada, 

 four of them in full operation. 



