IX 



fishes inhabiting the salt water exclusively can be as 

 readily propagated, artifirially, and increased to as un- 

 limited an extent as the anadromoits fishes with whose 

 spawning habits we had been more thoroughly acquaint- 

 ed. The necessity which compelled those fishes — the 

 shad, herring, salmon, etc., which spend most of their 

 lives in the salt water — to enter the rivers for the pur- 

 pose of spawning enabled us the more readily to study 

 their breeding habits at the time of such annual migra- 

 tion. These varieties, therefore, became the objects of 

 especial care and attention in the infancy of the Com- 

 mission's existence. 



Experiments conducted during last season have de- 

 monstrated our ability to hatch and distribute several 

 varieties of hshes, which inhabit our salt water solely, 

 to the same extent as has been accomplished in the case 

 of the shad, and, indeed, it is quite possible that the Bay 

 mackerel may be propagated on a yet larger scale 

 than has been attempted with the shad itself. 



About the first of July of last year I received from 

 Messrs. Marshall McDonald and R. E. Earll, who 

 were employed upon that portion of tlie work of the 

 10th Census which relates to the fisheries of our coast, 

 an intimation that the Bay mackerel were spawning in 

 Mobjack Bay, and that ri])e fish, whose eggs could be 

 readily imin-egnated by artificial means, were to be had 

 in some numbers from the pound nets operated in that 

 locality. 1 proceeded to Mobjack Bay, accordingly, in 

 the steamer "Lookout,'' and succeeded in obtaining a 

 sufficient number of ripe fish of this variety, and also of 

 the porgy, and some other sea-fishes of less iniportance, 

 to enable me to determine what wei'e the l)est forms of 

 apparatus to ])e used in their manipulation. As the 

 immediate object of my investigaticms was to determine 

 the projjer manner in which work should be condiu^ted 

 in tlie future, lather than to attemi)t the v/ork itself at 



