CULTURE OF THE SHAD. 149 



smolt returns the following summer a grilse of from three 

 to five pounds, why may not a shad attain a weight of two 

 and a half or three pounds in the same time ? 



In a report of the Fish Commissioners of one of the 

 New England States it is said that a few male shad nine 

 or ten inches in length are sometimes taken in the Connec- 

 ticut river ; and it is assumed that these have spent one 

 winter at sea. On this, which is a mere supposition, the 

 theory has been started that the females and most of the 

 males remain at sea two years. May not these males have 

 remained in the river all winter, the milt developing in the 

 mean time as it does in the male parr of the salmon ? We 

 know how much shorter time is occupied in the hatching 

 of the spawn, and the more rapid growth of the fry of the 

 shad. In three or four months a young shad will grow to 

 a size which a smolt only attains in fifteen or it may be in 

 twenty-seven months. With this wonderful precocity of 

 egg and fry, I cannot see why its growth at sea should not 

 be as much as two or three pounds by the next spring or 

 summer. If a few thousand shad fry could be confined to a 

 limited space by leading ofif a side stream from one of our 

 rivers, and marked, after they had grown to fiVe or six 

 inches, by cutting off the hinder part of the dorsal fin, and 

 then turned loose, it is quite likely that some of them might 

 be taken in the river near the place of their nativity the 

 following summer, and the problem be solved. 



The following, from the proceedings of the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, communicated through the 

 Smithsonian Institute, shows how the pioneer movement in 

 13* 



