FISH CULTURE. < 



young fish remain for a season where they were hatched, 

 living upon larvae and insects like the trout. When they 

 have arrived at about the size of a large brook shiner 

 they go down to the sea, and, there being no insurmount- 

 able dam or fall, they come back again every year, grow- 

 ing larger and larger with each season. By the third 

 year they are heavy fish. At even the first return they 

 will weigh 5 lbs. and more Once introduced, they will 

 reproduce themselves in great abundance, provided only 

 that they are not by prodigal fishing ruthlessly destroyed. 

 The distance which both shad and salmon will travel to 

 reach their spawning grounds is marvelous. Fifteen 

 hundred miles away from the sea they sometimes go. 

 While the salmon seeRs clear streams and shallow waters 

 with gravelly bottoms (for this fish deposits its spawn 

 like trout, in holes dug in the gravel, and covered when 

 spawned in), the shad seeks still waters and does not dig 

 holes or cover its eggs. Nor are they able to leap over 

 considerable ^obstructions, as salmon are ; therefore they 

 have been found heretofore in Vermont only in the Con- 

 necticut, and in that below the falls at Bellows Falls. 



Smelt and herring spawn like the shad, but will pass 

 more difficult obstructions. 



Shad, smelt and salmon can come into Lake Cham- 

 plain. There is now no obstruction to their passage ; the 

 Canadian authorities promise to keep the passage free, 

 and to do, at the rapids of the Richelieu, whatever is 

 necessary to improve or maintain that passage. 



But no shad or salmon can come above Bolyoke dam, 

 on the Connecticut River, by reason of the dam ; and 

 until fish-ways are provided for this dam nothing can be 

 done in this State which will restock the tributaries of 



