242 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



this is not true. Why, I have seen a bullhead dig a hole in the mud several inches 

 deep and lay its eggs. They do not leave the spot for any length of time, but 

 remain there until the fish are hatched. They stay with the little fish until they are 

 large enough to look out for themselves. This is true of al! kinds of fish. The 

 small ones need looking after. 



"'Now, what do the men employed in the hatcheries do? They are paid $25 a 

 night to fish for roe shad. These shad go on the flats or near the banks to 

 spawn, and are caught. Those not needed in the hatcheries are put in barrels and 

 sent away to be eaten. As soon as the young fish are hatched in the hatcheries they 

 are dumped overboard, and most of them die from neglect. If this thing is kept 

 up in a few years there will be no shad. Why, I have seen more fish taken from 

 the river in one day than there is now in a season. In some streams fishermen may 

 fish seven days in the week, but here we are permitted to fish but five days, and pay 

 a license of $1 per net. In the State of Vermont the fish hatcheries are main- 

 tained for less than $7,000 a year. In New York State $100,000 will not pay the 

 expenses, and a number have made themselves wealthy in the business.' ' 



It may be true, as the Examiner reporter states, that Mr. Conine has read and 

 observed, but it is quite evident from his interview that he has not observed the 

 habits of shad, nor has he read anything about them that is reliable, and the entire 

 interview is the rankest balderdash that was ever put out seriously by a newspaper 

 upon the subject of fish culture, and as for its containing facts, it deserves to rank 

 with that other newspaper essay which declared that the United States Fish Commis- 

 sion was crossing the shad with the jellyfish to eliminate the bones ; a cross which 

 would be as fruitful as a cross between a window shutter and a bull pup. There is 

 one fact in this wonderful interview, but it is not the one that Mr. Conine declares 

 to be such from his observation, for in that he is utterly wrong. The bullhead does 

 guard its spawn and brood its young after they are hatched, until they separate, and 

 there are two other fishes that do the same thing, but the shad is not one of them, 

 the other two being the black bass and sunfish. Because Mr. Smith plays golf on 

 Sunday it does not follow that Mr. Robinson, who lives in the same blbck, is a 

 devotee of the game and swipes the ball on the same day of the week. The shad 

 does exactly as the hatchery men told him, spawns and leaves the spawn and result- 

 ing fry, if any, to fate, and this is no new thing with shad, for they have done it ever 

 since men knew anything about shad. Can Mr. Conine produce any evidence that 

 any one has ever seen, not thousands, but a single dead shad fry floating on the sur- 

 face of the river? Shad fry are almost transparent, and in a glass of water held up 

 to the light they are scarcely distinguishable by the unobservant, and one man 



