1 68 TRANSACTIONS iSqQ-'oO 



and coldness of the supply, the robust and healthy nature of the 

 parent fish, and similar circumstances compensated for much that 

 was lacking in manipulation and technical knowledge, during the 

 early 5^ears of Canadian fish-culture. "The most important re- 

 quisite .... is pure water, it is indeed to a hatchery what coal 

 is to a steam-engine" said the late Sir James Gibson Maitland 

 (Int. Fisheries Exhib. London 1883) to whom Scottish fish-culture 

 owed .so much. It may be doubted whether any other country 

 can offer conditions so favourable as Canada, and it is certainly 

 remarkable that in the vast number of fr}-- of various species, 

 hatched year after year in the Dominion hatcheries, abnormal or 

 deformed fishes hardly ever occur. Monsters as a rule are 

 familiar enough in the tanks of European hatcheries, but nothing 

 is so rare in Canadian establishments. 



The following brief resume of the progress of fish-culture 

 operations in Canada gives at a glance the stages of its advance. 

 The Newcastle (Ont.) hatchery, as already stated, came under 

 government control in 1868, or rather 1867, and there have been 

 hatched, since that date, Lake Ontario salmon, Pacific spring 

 salmon,* brook trout, black bass-, German carp, Great Lake 

 trout, dore or pike perch and lake whitefish. Ontario salmon 

 became practicall}^ extinct within a few years after the hatchery 

 was started, and Pacific salmon do not appear to have thriven, one 

 or two questionable records only of their capture having been an- 

 nounced, while black bass proved only partially successful and 

 carp were a total failure. Brook trout, being mainly a game fish 

 and of inferior commercial importance, was eliminated in 1892, 

 though its culture was a marked success. Thus the hatchery has 

 confined its work to the incubation of Great Lake trout, the eggs 

 being secured by government ofiicers at Wiarton, Georgian Bay, 

 and the Lake whitefish, transferred from the Sandwich hatchery, 

 Barly in the year, generally February, in the eyed stage. 



The following table embraces details respecting the remain- 

 ing 14 hatcheries arranged for conciseness and convenience of 

 reference. 



*Professor Spence F. Baird gfenerously sent from the United States at 

 various times egfgs of the Quinnat or Spring sahnon. 



