l899-'oo TRANSACTIONS 167 



the rivers of Canada, where they were permitted (as Mr. Charles 

 G. Atkins tells us) to take salmon from the spawning beds, and 

 were thus enabled to secure some hundreds of thousands of eggs, 

 which were "hatched with a measure of success." Pennsylvania 

 and the State of Connecticut followed in 1866. In 1867, 1868, 

 1869 and i8jjo the States of Maine, New York, California, New 

 Jersey, and Rhode Island, severally began fish-culture in their 

 respective territories. 



In Canada the salmon and brook-trout naturally claimed first 

 attention ; but in 1867 and again in 1868, whitefish were success- 

 fully impregnated and hatched by Mr. Wilmot as he tells us in 

 one of his reports. A pioneer fish-culturist in the United States-, 

 Mr. N. W. Clark of the State of Michigan has been credited with 

 first successfully handling the eggs of the whitefish {Coregonus 

 ch(peiformis) on this continent, but the statement published by 

 Mr. Wilmot gives four or five years priority to the Canadian, if, 

 as Mr. Clark said, the first whitefish eggs in the United States 

 were artifically hatched in 1872 (see U. S. Fish Comm. Report, 

 p xxvi, 1872-73). In 1875 a whitefish hatchery of large capacity 

 was completed at Sandwich, Ontario, and has carried on, with 

 marvellous success, the incubation of the eggs of that species on 

 the Detroit River. 



Under the zealous and indefatigable Samuel Wilmot, fish- 

 culture in Canada made rapid strides, and the Dominion has 

 generallj^ been acknowledged to be in the front rank in this work. 

 France and Germany were in advance, it is true, so far as exact 

 scientific methods and knowledge- were concerned, and the United 

 States has taken the lead in making most munificent provision 

 from the public funds for pisciculture, and Great Britain has set 

 a worthy example in private enterprises and in costly experi- 

 ments under skilled superintendence, witness the Stormouthfield*, 

 Howietown, Cray's Foot, and Guildford establishments. 



Canadian fish-culture was no doubt conducted in a rough and 

 ready manner, the Superintendent and his staff being practically 

 self-taught, so that many blunders were committed, and many 

 erroneous methods for some years adopted. But the conditions 

 were so favourable, the purity of the water and the abundance 



*Now supplanted by Dupplin 



