Distribution. 71 



portation presented itself to my mind until after the completion 

 of the great work (in, I believe, the year 1853), and in the fol- 

 lowing year I made my first trip (although I made several after- 

 wards in the same year), carrying with me my first lot of fish in 

 a large tin bucket, perforated, and which I made to fit the opening 

 in the water-tank attached to the locomotive, which was supplied 

 with fresh water at the regular water stations along the line of 

 the road, and thereby succeeded well in keeping the fish (which 

 were young and small, having been selected for the purpose) alive, 

 fresh, and sound. 



" This lot of fish, as well as every subsequent one, on my arrival 

 at Cumberland, were put into the basin of the Chesapeake & 

 Ohio Canal, from which they had free egress and ingress to the 

 Potomac River and its tributaries, both above and below the 

 dam. * * ♦" 



Greneral Shriver also states in a subsequent letter to Dr. 

 Asa Wall, of Winchester, Virginia, dated September 17, 

 1867: 



" The number of these black bass taken to the Potomac River 

 by me, as well as I can now recollect, was about thirty. * ^ * " 



Mr. Edward Stabler, a well-known and reliable gentle- 

 man of Maryland, in a letter to G. T. Hopkins, of the 

 Board of Water Commissioners of Baltimore City, dated, 

 "Baltimore, 10th Mo., 28, '65," and published in the 

 " Baltimore Sun " during the same month, says : 



"After much delay and frequent disappointments and loss, from 

 the lack of suitable transportation, I have succeeded in taking in 

 the upper Potomac, and safely transporting to Baltimore, a fine 

 lot of 'black bass' [small-mouth], with which to stock 'Swan 

 Lake,' and also those in Druid Hill Park. 



"As a brief history of the introduction of this superior fish into 

 the tributaries of the Chesapeake, and east of the Alleghanies — 

 for they are, in my opinion, before the trout, both for sport and 

 the table — may not be without interest to some, it may be stated 

 that some thirteen years since, my son, A, G. Stabler, then a con- 



