

SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. - 125 



escape. And if — as may be the case, we do not know — 

 the naturally hatched fry are hardier or more active, then 

 they will be the more likely to survive the perils, and will 

 owe their continued existence and their appearance in due 

 course somewhere as marketable fish to the presence for a 

 time in the sea of their brethren from the hatchery. 



I shall come now from these general considerations — 

 to which Mr. Fryer does not seem to give enough atten- 

 tion — to some of the detailed statements in his report as 

 to the results of hatching, and upon some aspects of 

 which, such as the mortality in captivity, in my opinion 

 he lays far too much stress. I cannot now go into every 

 point upon which we may differ more or less, but shall 

 take up his treatment of the United States statistics, as 

 they are, perhaps, the most important, and the ones 

 discussed at greatest length. 



After quoting (p. 39) the statistics of the Cod operations 

 at the Wood's Holl Hatchery, he admits that the figures 

 show " successful results." He then attempts to upset 

 this conclusion by arguing that in computing the number 

 of eggs and fry derived from a parent fish we should take 

 into account not merely the actual parents, the fish that 

 spawned, but also all the others that were penned up in 

 the spawning pond. This is surely a most unjustifiable 

 procedure. What reason is there to think that these 

 non-spawning fish would have spawned if left in the sea ? 

 In fact, if the object is to make a comparison between 

 natural and artificial conditions, surely from what we 

 know of life in the sea it is highly probable that some of 

 the fish that spawned in captivity would, if left at large, 

 have been destroyed by man, or their natural enemies, 

 before they became parents. Consequently, I consider 

 that the Superintendent of the Hatchery was perfectly 

 right in considering as parent fish only those from which 



