Stbeam Pollution 21 



increases as rapidly in the future as it has in the immediate past, 

 the time is close at hand when the shad will be as great a rarity in 

 the Hudson as the salmon is today in the Connecticut. 



Salmon in Atlantic Rivers 



It is worth while to recount briefly the history of the salmon in 

 New England rivers as illustrated well by the record of the Con- 

 necticut river, from which, even though the cause is not the same, 

 is indicated clearly what will happen to the shad of the Hudson if 

 attention is not directed to the problem promptly and energetically 

 enough to control the unfavorable conditions that are growing 

 up and have gone so far at the present moment that the end of the 

 story is in sight. In his discussion of the Atlantic salmon, David 

 Starr Jordan writes as follows : 



" The salmon was at one time very abundant in the Connecticut, 

 and it probably occurred in the Housatonic and Hudson. * * * 

 Many Connecticut people remember hearing their grandfathers say 

 that when they went to the river to buy shad the fishermen used to 

 stipulate that they should buy a specified number of salmon, also. 

 But at the beginning of this century they began rapidly to diminish. 

 Mitchill stated, in 1814, thkt in former days the supply to the New 

 York market usually came from the Connecticut, but of late years 

 from the Kennebec, covered with ice. Reverend David Dudley Field, 

 writing in 181 9, states that salmon had scarcely been seen in the 

 Connecticut for 15 or 20 years. The circumstances of their extermi- 

 nation in the Connecticut are well known, and the same story, with 

 names and dates changed, serves equally well for other rivers. 



In 1798 a corporation, known as the 'Upper Locks and Canal 

 Company ' built a dam 16 feet high at Millers River, 100 miles from 

 the mouth of the Connecticut. For 2 or 3 years fish were seen in 

 great abundance , below the dam, and for perhaps 10 years they 

 continued to appear, vainly striving to reach their spawning grounds ; 

 but soon the work of extermination was complete. When, in 1872, 

 a solitary salmon made its appearance, the Saybrook fisherman did 

 not know what it was." 



This instance of the disappearance of a species from the aquatic 

 fauna is definitely traceable to interference with the reproductive 

 function. It concerns a form that had great economic value. Other 

 cases can be cited that are equally clear and that bear directly upon 

 the topic of this report. I shall use only one and it is almost as 

 striking though the form concerned has only moderate economic 

 worth. 



