of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 



7 



Year. 



Fry Liberated. 



1900 

 1901 

 1902 

 1903 

 1904 

 1905 

 1906 

 1907 



31,305,000 

 51,800,000 

 55,700,000 

 53,600,000 

 34,780,000 

 24,500,000 

 4,406,000 

 1,282,000 



Owing to the fact that the hatching work is carried on in conjunc- 

 tion with the work of the Marine Laboratory, its cost is relatively 

 small, the extra expenditure on coals, food for the fishes, &c, being 

 estimated at about £80. 



The Loch Fyne Experiments with Plaice Fry. 



To the present Report Dr. Fulton contributes a paper descriptive 

 of the problems and principles of the artificial propagation of sea 

 fishes, dealing especially with the proofs of the results of the work 

 which have been brought forward, and in particular with the 

 experiments on the effects of the liberation of large numbers of 

 plaice fry in Loch Fyne, which were begun thirteen years ago and 

 have been carried on since then in each year. Hatcheries for the 

 propagation of sea fishes now exist in America, Norway, New 

 Zealand, New South Wales, Scotland, and England, where there 

 are two, one at Piel and the other at Port Erin, in the Isle of Man. 

 In the United States, where the amount of money voted by 

 Congress for piscicultural work in the year 1906-1907 amounted 

 to 454,180 dollars, or about £94,600, there are three permanent 

 hatcheries and several temporary hatcheries devoted to the 

 artificial propagation of marine fishes, the output of fry from them 

 in the year aggregating over 503,000,000 and 168,000,000 lobsters. 

 In Canada the amount appropriated for pisciculture was nearly 

 £33,000, five hatcheries being engaged in lobster culture, the 

 output of young lobsters amounting to 501,000.000. With regard 

 to the benefits accruing from these operations, the Fish Com- 

 missioner of the United States reports that encouraging results of 

 the efforts of the Government to maintain the fish supply by 

 artificial means appear in reports from fishermen and fish culturists 

 in all parts of the country ; and that, although it is difficult to 

 establish definitely the extent to which the hatcheries have 

 affected the condition of the commercial fisheries of the coastal 

 waters and the Great Lakes, the renewed productiveness of old 

 and abandoned fishing grounds and the abundance of fish on 

 entirely new areas are strongly indicative. 



Proof of the amount of benefit derived from the artificial propa- 

 gation of sea fishes is very difficult to obtain, since in almost all 

 cases the fry which were added to any area of water are simply an 

 addition to the fry which naturally exist there ; and there is no 

 system of statistics in use which would enable the effect of the 

 liberation of fry on the quantity of fishes subsequently caught to 



