B12 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June 25, 1898. 
A Quarter Century of Fishculture, 
If we may trust the records, the artificial fertiliza- 
tion and hatching of fish eggs was 125 years old when 
Forest and Stream first saw the light of day; yet the 
results accomplished since the establishment of this 
journal far exceed in extent and importance all the 
previous results in the history of fishculture. 
Jacobi waited twenty-two years for a publisher and 
eight years longer for a substantial recognition of his 
services in the form of a life pension, which he did not 
need, from George III. of England. His followers be- 
gan to practice fishculture after still greater delay, as, 
for example, in Italy in 1791, in France in 1820, in 
Bohemia in 1824, in Great Britain in 1837, in Switzerland 
in 1842, in Norway in 1850, in Finland in 1852, in the 
United States in 1853, in Belgium, Holland and Russia 
in 1854, in Australia in 1862, in Canada about 1863, in 
Austria in 1865, in Japan in 1877', in Hawaii in 1879, 
in Mexico, New Zealand and South Africa within 
recent years. 
All of the earlier operations in artificial breeding were 
limited to fishes of the salmon family, chiefly to the At- 
lantic salmon, and several kinds of trout. It was natural 
that attention should first have been attracted to such 
species. The eggs are large and showy; they are de- 
posited in shallow places, usually in mountain streams, 
and the spawning fish become conspicuous by reason 
of their breeding habits. The fish are among the most 
highly prized by all who know them. In the countries 
in which private fishculture was first practiced, more- 
over, the fishing waters belonged to the State or to pri- 
vate individuals, and these interests were best promoted 
by the increase of the game fishes. 
The "wet" method of fertilization of the fish egg must 
have been suggested by observations upon the spawning 
grounds, and it is not surprising that Vladimir 
Wraski's discovery of the better plan of "diy" mingling 
of the eggs and milt before immersing them in water 
was delayed until nearly a century after the publication 
of Jacobi's methods. This is only one of many valuable 
fishcultural discoveries for which America is indebted 
to Europe, but America has given more than a fair 
equivalent in return. Dr. Borodine has justly written: 
"Europe has originated and developed the methods of 
fishculture, but America has carried it on upon an in- 
dustrial scale under Government auspices, and has in- 
vented and introduced in general practice methods suit- 
able for large operations, quite different from those used 
in Europe." 
Dr. Oscar Nordqvist also has remarked that "On ac- 
count of the enormous amount of fish breeding, the 
Americans have invented a number of exceedingly sim- 
ple, cheap and easily managed (forms of) apparatus for 
the purpose, and have thus materially simplified the 
work." He attributes the great extent of fishcultural 
work in the United States partly to the prevalent rights 
of fishing here, which throw upon the general Govern- 
ment, or the State, the duty of preserving and increasing 
the supply of fish, a duty which would be wholly ne- 
glected were it not for such supervision. 
How far the artificial breeding and planting of fish 
should be supplemented by legal regulation of the fisheries 
is as much a vexing problem to-day as it was when 
Forest and Stream was young. The same schools 
of fishery economists in Great Britain, owing allegiance 
to Huxley on the one side, opposed to legislation except 
for inland waters, and to Dr. Francis Day on the other, 
advocating strenuous legal regulation of all fisheries, 
exist and combat each other's views as vigorously as 
ever. ' 
In the United States public opinion is still largely an- 
tagonistic to fishery legislation. After fourteen years 
of scientific investigation Prof. Baird was not convmced 
that the permanence of the sea fisheries required the en- 
actment of laws, and he never recommended legislation 
in that direction. The anglers, however, believmg that 
certain forms of apparatus used in the commercial fish- 
eries are destructive of food fishes and their eggs, are 
constantly trying to secure legislation against the use 
of such apparatus in shallow bays near the shores. 
Whenever such proposed restriction is shown to be 
necessary to the public good it will meet with hearty ap- 
proval; but it may easily work unnecessary hardship 
upon those who buy fish, as well as upon those who 
catch them, unless it is well grounded in facts. The 
laws of the States very properly aim to protect fish 
in their spawning season and from destructive methods 
of fishing; also to prevent the pollution and obstruction 
of streams and to preserve stocked waters from fishing 
until the fishes have reached a suitable age and abun- 
There is still a great deal to be desired in the way 
of uniformity of laws and limits of open seasons. 
The first public fishcuhural establishment was set 
up at Huningue, in Alsace, by the French Government 
in 1S50 tinder the direction of Prof. Coste. The Gov- 
ernment of Norway extended its patronage to public fish- 
culture in the same year. Canada entered upon the 
work more than thirty years ago; and the New England 
States were first in the United States to appropriate 
money for stocking public waters. The United States 
Government began fishcultural operations in 1872. The 
first attempt at the artificial spawning of salmon in the 
United States was made by M. C. G. Atkins, at Craig 
Brook, Me., in 1871, under the direction of the Fish 
Comm'issions of Maine, Massachusetts and Connecti- 
cut. Artificial propagation of the quinnat salmon began 
in the McCloud River, Cal., in 1873, with the work of 
Livingston Stone. In this same year the U. S. Fish 
Commission sent 35>ooo shad fry from the Connecticut 
River to the Sacramento, in California, the only prior 
shipment having consisted of 12,000 fry from the Hudson, 
taken over in 1871 by Seth Green for the California Fish 
Commission. " , , , . 
Publir fishculture was very young and awkward m 
the United States in 1873. The Wraski method of "dry" 
fertilization of eggs, although published m 1856 or 1857, 
was republished in French only in 1871, and became 
known to us through a translation by Geo. Shepard 
Page. Atkins had greatly improved the apparatus for 
the hatching of salmon and trout eggs by substituting 
wire cloth bottoms for trays instead of gravel and glass 
grilles; but shad eggs were laboriously developed in 
floating boxes in the rivers, and their fry were trans- 
ported in milk cans, carried in baggage cars, from 
Connecticut to California and the Southern States. The 
shad hatching cone, of Bell and Mather, did not make 
its appearance until 1875, This was followed two years 
later by the plunging buckets, and soon afterward came 
the automatic hatching jar of Marshall McDonald, one 
of a type of jars, including Chase's, Clark's and Wilmot's, 
which has revolutionized certain lines of fishculture. 
Another automatic glass jar of more recent invention 
is the bottomless bottle of a Swiss named Weiss, which 
is inverted, the water entering at the neck and overflow- 
ing over the edges of the bottom. 
Floating eggs, and indeed eggs of marine fishes in 
general, had not entered into the scope of the Fish Com- 
mission's work until 1879, when the semi-rotating cylin- 
der, designed by H. C. Chester, was used for hatching 
eggs of the cod. James W. Milner and R. E. Earll soon 
afterward discovered the utility of an intermittent siphon 
for producing the tidal motion necessary to the proper 
development of cod eggs, and this principle was intro- 
duced and made available in the tidal box of Marshall 
McDonald, in which so many hundreds of millions of 
floating eggs have recently been hatched. 
Twenty-five years ago, if any one desired to hatch 
heavy, adhesive eggs, he placed them upon bunches of 
twigs or glass plates, to which they adhered. Now, 
thanks to the ingenuity of Prof. J. E. Reighard and J, 
J. Stranahan, we separate such eggs readily by the use of 
starch or fine muck, and hatch them in glass jars, as 
we do with shad eggs. It is the simplest thing in the 
world now to hatch 400,000,000 eggs of the pike-perch 
in a short season instead of a few hundred thousand by 
the old methods. 
The past quarter century has witnessed other note- 
worthy improvements in public fishculture, such as the 
use of steamships and steam machinery for hatching; 
the introduction by the States and the United States 
of ■ cars especially fitted for the hatching en route 
and the transportation of fish and eggs; the employment 
of refrigeration and aeration systems, by means of which 
the results of fishculture have been wonderfully in- 
creased. 
Public fishculture worthy of the name exists only in 
the United States and Canada. This is clearly shown in 
a review of fishculture in Europe and North America 
for the year 1891, pubhshed by Dr. Borodine in Forest 
AND Stream, and in the Bulletin of the U. S. Fish Com- 
mission for 1893. According to his statements all of 
North America appropriated for fishcultural work in 
that year $406,669; all Europe appropriated only $37,- 
032.50. The number of fish produced in North America 
was 1,616,027,192; in Europe 277,973,016. Of the 416 
fish hatcheries in Europe only 82 belonged to the re- 
spective Governments, while 80 referred to in North 
America were all Governmental establishments. Europe 
is almost without hatcheries for fishes of the shad and 
herring kind, the perches and marine fishes generally, 
and little attention is paid to stocking public waters, but 
nearly all fry are furnished to private streams. 
It would be unfair, however, to omit reference to 
the assistance actually rendered to public fishculture 
by various governments. Germany contributes funds 
annually for the support of the fishcultural operations of 
the Deutscher Fischerei Verein aijjfl of the hatchery at 
Hiiningen, in Alsace. Norway grants a subsidy to the 
great cod hatchery at Flodevigen and for other pur- 
poses. Switzerland pays the owners of private hatch- 
eries for the fry planted by them in public waters. France 
maintains five small Governmental hatcheries, and gives 
a subsidy to a private shad hatchery on the Seine; the 
Government has provided also for a fishcultural school 
at the Gremaz hatchery of Mr. Lugrin, the inventor of 
the method of artificially propagating live food for fry. 
Italy paid $6,500 for the construction of a large hatchery 
at Brescia in 1891^ and has established a smaller one in 
Rome under direction of Dr. Decio Vinciguerre. The 
Netherlands planted salmon fry in the Rhine in 1891 at 
an expense of $2,084. Great Britain makes grants for 
scientific investigation, and such allotments are used in 
part for the support of a marine hatchery at Dunbar, 
"Scotland. Assistance is furnished also to the St. An- 
drews marine laboratory, where fishcultural investiga- 
tions have been carried on since 1884, and to the labora- 
tory at Plymouth. Sweden contributes nothing directly 
for fishculture, but makes provision for the improve- 
ment of the fishery industries. Russia does very little 
beyond making small grants for a hatchery at Nicholsk, 
founded by the inventor of the "dry" method of fertiliz- 
ing eggs, and for the Fishery Society for Finland. 
In the packing and transportation of eggs and young 
fish great improvements have been made. In Europe 
eggs are not transported, as a rule, until they have 
reached the eyed stage; but in the United States newly 
spawned eggs are freely and successfully shipped even for 
a period of several days. The fear that this may result 
in hatching weaker fry does not outweigh the enormous 
advantages gained in reaching a central hatchery from 
several field stations. By the use of suitable trays and 
the assistance of quick transportation the yield of shad 
and whitefish, has been wonderfully increased. 
A notable improvement in the results of stocking 
streams has come from the use of young fish several 
months or a year old instead of very young fry. This 
is now pretty generally accepted as the best method of 
planting, and many failures of the past may be turned to 
successes in the future by the change of plan. Since the 
rearing of shad in ponds has proved entirely feasible and 
promising of good results, the same principle should be 
applied to whitefish and pike-perch, about which fish- 
culturists have been greatly discouraged, after years of 
hard work planting the fry. In Europe whitefish and 
pike-perch are very successfully reared in ponds, and in 
our own country Mr. Thomson has accomplished similar 
results in Indiana. 
There is room for much more activity in rearing nat- 
ural food for fish, and the successes of the next quarter 
century will revolve around that problem^ as a center. 
It would be a good plan to foster experimental work 
in fishculture under the auspices of the general Govern- 
ment. The little that we know is so painfully in con- 
trast with the mass of unknown problems as to call for 
prompt and generous action in behalf of public instruc- 
tion. The proper treatment of fish in disease is as im- 
perfectly known as the cure of consumption. Even the 
various troubles caused by fungus find the average fish- 
culturist helpless to overcome them by any means. 
It must not be supposed that there has been a dearth 
of literature in the period under discusion. Expositions 
have been numerous, and each one has called forth more 
or less work in fishculture. Among those in which the 
apparatus and methods of fishculture were made a spe- 
cial feature were the following: Philadelphia, 1876; 
Berlin, 1880; Edinburgh, 1882; London, 1883; New 
Orleans, 1886; Cincinnati, 1888; Paris, 1889; Chicago, 
1893; Atlanta, 1895; Brussels, 1896; Nashville, 1897; 
Bergen and Omaha, 1898. At Berlin, in 1880, were given 
in the department of fishculture ten gold medals, five 
silver medals, seven bronze medals, arid fifteen diplomas 
of honorable mention, the United States having received 
six gold medals, one each of silver and bronze, and two 
certificates of honorable mention. Essays and books 
upon fishculture formed a natural preparation for these 
expositions, and the materials exhibited in turn supplied 
subjects for new literary productions in that direction. 
What follows is not an attempt to give a complete list 
of writings upon the subject, but merely a brief mention 
of the most important recent sources of information, 
and this to some extent is of necessity drawn from mem- 
ory. The expositions at Berlin, 1880; London, 1883, and 
Chicago, 1893, were especially fruitful in fishcultural 
literature, as will be seen from the titles: 
1873, "An Essay on Fishculture," John H. Klippart, 
Columbus, O. 
1877, "Practical Trout Culture," J. H. Slack, New 
York. 
1877, "Domesticated Trout: How to Breed and Grow 
Them," L. Stone, Boston. 
1879, "Fish Hatching and Fish Catching," Roosevelt 
& Green, Rochester, N. Y. 
1881, "Die Fischzucht," Max von dem Borne, Berlin. 
1881, "Epochs in Fishculture," G. Brown Goode, in 
Forest and Stream. 
1883, "Fishculture," Francis Day, London. 
(Besides this, numerous important essays were pre- 
pared for the London Fisheries Exposition of 1883.) 
1883, "Modern Methods and Apparatus," R. E. Earll, 
in Nature, Oct. 4. 
1894, "Bulletin U. S. Fish Commission for 1893," de- 
voted entirely to papers prepared for the World's Fishery 
Congress at the World's Fair, Chicago. 
189s, "The Angler's Paradise and How to Obtain it," 
J. J. Armistead, Dumfries, Scotland. 
1897, _ "Manual of Fishculture," in Report of U. S. Fish 
Commission for 1897. 
1898, "Proceedings of the World's Fisheries Congress 
at Tampa, Fla.," in Report U. S. F. C. for 1898. 
A little book upon fishculture was published in Italian 
several years ago, and a work on marine fishculture in 
France has recently appeared from the pen of G. Roche. 
To the foregoing must be added the very valuable es- 
says and short articles which have appeared frequently 
in Forest and Stream, the Field, Land and Water, the 
Fishing Gazette (London), in the journals of the French 
Society of Acclimatization, the circulars of the Ger- 
man Fishery Association and allied organizations, the 
French, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish fishery and 
fishcultural magazines and reports, the annual reports of 
the Department of Marine and Fisheries of Canada, 
Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, annual 
reports of State Fish Commissioners, the Reports and 
Bulletins of the U. S. Fish Commission. There is no 
lack of good literature; what we need now is a work- 
ing manual drawn from these sources and from extended 
experience in the hatcheries. 
A hasty glance at the list of fishes now made the sub- 
jects of artificial breeding and rearing will serve to show 
how far we have progressed in the quarter century past. 
Fishculturists are regularly occupied with: 
Pacific, Atlantic and landlocked salmons. 
Rainbow, steelhead, red-throat, brown trout (and. sev- 
eral of its Etiropean allies). 
Lake and brook trouts and the saiblings. 
Whitefishes and lake herrings. 
Graylings. 
Smelts. 
Shad. 
Black bass, rock bass, crappies. 
Mascalonge. 
Mackerel. 
Cod, haddock, pollock, tomcod. 
Flatfish, sand dab, four-spotted flounder. 
The following may be added as fishes imder experi- 
ment: Golden ide, sturgeon, yellow perch, Spanish 
mackerel, tautog, cunner, scup, sea bass, squeteague, 
sheepshead, sea herring, alewife. 
Among the economic invertebrates receiving much 
attention are the lobsters, oysters, clams, mussels, and 
snonges (the last propagated now from cuttings, like 
some plants). 
What has fishculture accomplished during the Forest 
AND Stream era? It has passed out of the stages of ex- 
periment into the realm of great operations, upon which 
depend important commercial fisheries and remunerative 
private enterprises. It has established the shad in the 
Pacific States, where it was unknown before, and re- 
stored the fish to rivers of the Middle Atlantic States. 
It has acclimatized the striped bass in California. The 
rainbow trout of the Pacific slope has been thoroughly 
domesticated in Eastern waters. The brown trout of 
Europe is now greatly multiplied in America, New Zea- 
land and Australia. The inshore cod fisheries of New 
England have been effectively re-established, while a sim- 
ilar result has been accomplished for Nomay through the 
agency of its greats hatchery at Flodevigen. The val- 
uable salmon industries of the Columbia and Sacramento 
rivers rest to-day upon the basis of artificial breeding, 
and the enormous yield of red salmon in Eraser Rive- 
and the Gulf of Georgia is surely maintained by fishcul- 
tural operations, combined with protective legislation. 
That there have been some failures or indifferent results 
goes without saying; experiments do not always lead to 
success in any line of human endeavor; but improve- 
ments in methods and apparatus have come so fast as to 
make public fishculture one of the principal factors in 
the increase, and the consequent cheapening, of the food 
supply. With the outlay of the same energy and intel- 
ligence continuing during the next twenty-five years, 
who can foretell the development of our fishcultural 
system and the achievements to follow? 
Tarleton H. Bean. 
