42 Fish^ Fishing and Fisheries of Pennsylvania. 



baskets immediately on being- found. It was sooa made manifest that 

 the chief reliance in reviving- the shad fisheries must be by artificial 

 propagation. A few years previous Mr. ISeth Green, the distingruished 

 fish culturist of Kochester, New York, had invented and patented a con- 

 venient hatching box. Marvellous results, it was claimed, had been 

 obtained in the rivers and other states by the use of this appliance. In 

 the Connecticut river, where the fisheries were rapidly being abandoned 

 on account of the scarcity of fish, the third year after these boxes were 

 first used in the hatching, it is said, the catch exceeded that of any year 

 in its history. The young shad returned mature fish to the rivers when 

 three to four years old. Fisheries which had been in existence for nearly 

 a century, and at which records of their annual catch were kept, reported 

 their yield of 1870 as being larger than ever before. Keferring to this 

 result, the fish coinmissioners of Connecticut in their report of 1873 

 said: 



"The number of shad running in the Connecticut river has increased 

 to such an extent that the complaint of the fishermen is no longer a 

 scarcity of fish; but that the market is so overstocked that they do not 

 obtain a remunerative price for them." 



The same desirable result was claimed by the use of these hatching 

 boxes in the Hudson river; but not to so marked a degree, owing to a 

 scarcity of good spawning grounds upon which to take the shad. Care- 

 fully considering what had been accomplished by artificial propagation, 

 and believing that fully as much could be done for the shad streams of 

 Pennsylvania, the commissioners of Pennsylvania felt justified in in- 

 troducing them. They, therefore, entered into correspondence with Mr. 

 Green, and speedily made arrangements with him by which they pur- 

 chased from him the right to use his hatching boxes lor three years in 

 the State of Pennsylvania for the sum of $2,000 and soon after they were 

 received. 



The point of operation was established at Newport, in Perry county, 

 at the fishery of Messrs. Miller and Kough, with Mr. Bhame one of Mr. 

 Green's assistants in charge. From the beginning the work was prose- 

 cuted under great difliculties, the water at first too cold became suddenly 

 overheated. Nevertheless Mr. Bhame succeeded in turning into the 

 Susquehanna at Newport in 1873, 2,700,000 young shad. In addition to 

 this, Mr. AYhelcher, another assistant of Mr. Green and employed by 

 Prof. Spencer Baird, the United States Fish Commissioner, who had 

 been sent by the latter at the expense of the Pennsylvania commission, 

 hatched and turned into the Susquehanna at Columbia and Marietta, 

 about 500,000 young shad, making a total hatching for the first year of 

 the new commission of a little over 3,000,000 shad. The same year also 

 about a million fry of the same species hatched at Point Pleasant, Bucks 

 county, by Dr. J. H. Clark, one of the fish commissioners of New Jer- 

 sey were turned into the Delaware. In 1874, 3,065,000 were hatched for 



