REVIEWS. 413 
grown three year old fish can be caught in any number. The 
close time of thirty-six hours (it ought to be forty-eight), in each 
week will give these fish a chance to spawn up the river, now that 
the fish ways are open, and we congratulate our Connecticut 
fishermen on the good days that are before them, owing to the 
affection of “Green’s shad” (as they have been called, as Mr. 
Green was the person who stocked the river in 1867) for their 
place of birth. 
Many thousand young fry of the salmon, St. Croix salmon, 
Sebago salmon, togue and common trout have been placed in 
the rivers and ponds of Massachusetts and adjoining states during 
the past year, and we confidently expect to live to see good salmon 
and trout again abundant in our waters. 
Much of the present report is taken up with the work of the 
Commissioners in bringing the owners of the Holyoke Water Co. 
to realize the fact that the fishes have a legal as well as natural 
right to a free passage in our rivers, and the Supreme Court hav- 
ing decided in favor of the fishes we trust that this case will 
settle all opposition to fish ways, which, as the commissioners 
state, the owners of dams are fast discovering, practically take 
little or nothing from their water power. 
An account of the breeding and habits of the Black Bass by 
the late Mr. Tisdale (which we reprinted in our last number), and 
the valuable remarks made by Capt. Atwood, the veteran fisherman 
and Senator, on the habits and modes of capture of our sea fishes, 
conclude this very satisfactory report. 
r. Atkins in his report as Commissioner of Fisheries of the 
State of Maine* enters very fully into the subject of fish ways, 
and in a most practical and common sense manner tells us what 
has been done, and still better, of the decided success of all the 
fish ways that were completed in time for the fish ascending during 
the season of 1870. From this report it can no longer be a mat- 
ter of doubt but that properly constructed fish ways can be made 
at no very great cost, which not only will furnish a free passage 
to the fish, but also without materially injuring the water power 
of the parties owning the dams. Now that these points are secured 
practically, we shall hear but little about the “ theory” regarding 
fish ways. Their construction on every salmon, shad and alewife 
EIN os er 
+Fourth Report of the Commissioner of Fisheries of the State of Maine, for the year 
1870. Svo pamph. pp. 56. 2 plates. State Document, 1870. 
