150 AMERICAN FISH CULTURE. 



introducing sliad into the rivers flowing into the Gulf of 

 Mexico was made : — 



" On the Introduction of the American Shad into the 

 Alabama River. By W. C. Daniell, M. D. of Savannah, 

 Ga. — My success in establishing the white shad in the 

 Alabama river being now complete, I propose to give you 

 a detailed statement of the matter. 



" Having long doubted the generally-received theory of 

 the annual migration south from the northern seas, of the 

 white shad, and of the consequent annual migration thither 

 of the young fry hatched from the eggs deposited by their 

 parents in our fresh-water streams, I made inquiry of our 

 fishermen, and learned that minute but distinctive differ- 

 ences were readily detected between the white shad taken in 

 the Savannah river and those taken in the Ogeechee river, 

 eighteen miles south of the Savannah river. Fully satis- 

 fied of this fact, I readily concluded that the young shad 

 that descend to the sea pever go so far from the mouth of 

 the river descended as to lose their connection with it, and 

 that they ascend in the spring the same river which they 

 had descended as young fish the previous summer. Then 

 the feeding-ground, so to speak, of the shad is in or near 

 the mouth of the river. If the young shad does attain its 

 growth at the mouth of the Savannah and of the Ogeechee 

 rivers, may there not be equally good feeding-grounds at 

 the mouths of the Alabama and other rivers flowing into 

 the Gulf of Mexico? To solve this question, I, with the 

 aid of my friend, Mark A. Cooper, Esq., whose residence 

 on the Etowah river, in Barton county, supplied an eligible 



