June 14, 1903J 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
467 
how nearly reality will approach anticipation. That boy, 
however, is going bass fishing, and just what he will do 
remains to be seen. He is looking forward to the trip 
with only that enthusiasm to be found in a boy. and I 
and thinking of the good time I will have just sitting there 
coaching that boy and enjoying the fishing by proxy. 
Charles Cristadoro. 
The Ohio River Shad. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The publication in your issue of the 24th ult. of Dr. 
Evermann's announcement of the discovery of a new 
species of shad in the Ohio River is of great interest. 
Commercially, the discovery of shad in the rivers of the 
Mississippi Valley may not prove to be of great im- 
portance, for, as soon as their existence becomes generally 
known, the hand of every market fisherman will be against 
them, and through every mile of their long journey they 
will run the gauntlet of destruction. To me, and perhaps 
to many others, the question of dominant interest is as to 
their derivation. How is it that they have traversed 
nearly two thousand miles of the main and tributary 
rivers to escape observation until recently, and finally, 
what occult attraction has drawn them from the far-away 
Gulf to the mountains of West Virginia? Why passing 
by scores of intervening streams should they arduously 
stem so many hundred leagues of rapidly flowing water 
to at last attain a spawning ground in a remote and se- 
cluded valley of the Blue Ridge? I should premise at 
the outset that I do not for a moment suppose that the so- 
called Ohio shad are the descendants of primitive occu- 
pants of that stream; on the contrary, I believe them to 
be of recent introduction. It is unreasonable to suppose 
that so conspicuous a fish could frequent a great river 
system, traversing a well-populated territory, passing 
through large cities and towns and yet remain long un- 
discovered. The aboriginal Indians held the shad in the 
highest appreciation ; the importance of the fishery .was 
also fully recognized by the white pioneers, and played 
an important part in the development of some of the ea re- 
settlements. I quote some observations of mine upon 
this subject with reference to the Wyoming Valley, ap- 
pearing in the Popular Science Monthly, April. 1895: 
"The dreary winter of seclusion and solitude, of cold 
and privation, of coarse and scanty food, had passed and 
gone, and the gladdening rays of the returning sun had 
quickened the face of nature into joyous life. In their 
long deprivation the isolated community hungered for the 
coming fruits of the earth. Of fresh food there was 
little or none, and toil and hardship, unsustained by 
proper nutrition, told hardly upon the weaker members of 
the lone and distant settlement. Then it was, in the time 
of their stress and suffering, that the ocean's bounteous 
harvest was borne against the fierce current of the swollen 
river, to diffuse joy and gladness in remote and difficult 
wilds. Not only did this manna of the wilderness tide 
over the waiting interval between seed time and harvest, 
but, salted or smoked, afforded a winter supply of nour- 
ishing food that, during the felling of the forest and the 
clearing of the land, sustained the strength of the hardy 
pioneer." 
I am not in entire accord with Dr. Evermann's conten- 
tion that shad might be present in abundance, and yet 
remain -forever unknown as long as present fishery 
methods are continued. Shad unmolested tend to rapidly 
multiply, and to disperse themselves, occupying every 
available spawning ground. Many, probably most of the 
tributaries of the Ohio, are as favorable to their increase 
as were Eastern streams in primitive times. What that 
abundance was we know from the colonists' practice of 
using them as manure, as did also the Indians before 
Ihem. The early settlers of the Ohio Valley were familiar 
with the shad, their knowledge of its teeming abundance 
in the rivers of the East would certainly, upon their occu- 
pation of virgin territory, have inspired the keenest quest 
for a fish of recognized value. 
I regard, therefore, the apparent paucity of the Ohio 
shad as an additional evidence of its recent introduction. 
Nowhere apparently have they been observed in such 
numbers as in the Kanawha River of West Virginia, 
where they were first noticed in 1896. There can hardly 
be any doubt upon this point, for in 1875 the Federal 
Government began a systematic improvement of the navi- 
gation of that stream, expending millions in the con- 
struction of a number of locks and dams along its course, 
the work continuing until about 1890, during which time, 
it is evident, the shad, if present, could not have escaped 
detection. Discovered in the lower Ohio in 1876, it evi- 
dently- took the fish twenty years to attain the Kanawha, 
a river of comparatively meager volume and size, barri- 
caded with a number of locks and dams, which, in con- 
nection with the busy traffic sustained, could not have 
failed to have at once betrayed their presence. 
The distinctive appearance of the Ohio shad, sufficient, 
in the opinion of Dr. Evermann, to establish it as a sepa- 
rate species, is no valid argument in favor of its imme- 
morial existence. A change of location often effects a 
speedy modification of the form, appearance and habits 
of a fish, as divers antipodean and trans-Pacific plantings 
have shown. The most marked characteristic of the new 
variety is its slender and more graceful form; it is built 
upon finer lines; it is a clipper, so to speak. Trout in- 
habiting swift streams are observed to be lithe and slen- 
der, to be better modeled for speed, with a body tapering 
more like that swift and agile courser of the deep, the 
mackerel. Trout tenanting lakes are more chunky in con- 
tour, and the same variations in outline are presented 
by the salmon of different streams. Not many genera- 
tions of contributing conditions would probably be needed 
to transform the short, chunky and high-arched shad of 
the Atlantic into its slimmer and speedier brother of the 
Ohio, and it is a consideration of these conditions that 
is the object of this paper. 
In all that I have written upon the subject of fish migra- 
tion, it has been my contention that the far-voyaging 
pilgrims are guided by a mysterious perception of their 
bourn, and that this perception may be a telepathic cog- 
nizance, not only of the locality sought, but also of such 
'of their kindred as may at the time be in its vicinity. 
Except upon the assumption of the existence of such 
hereditary faculty, it is impossible to account for the ac- 
complishment of many species of widely wandering fish. 
These creatures, in most cases, must certainly be directed 
by an impulse that has actuated thousands of antecedent 
generations, each, in its turn, visiting, season after season, 
one particular locality, and an impulse of local direction 
established by the successive effort of a myriad individuals 
cannot be eradicated in the lifetime of one. This single- 
ness of action in the fish colony,, its firm cementation, has 
long been recognized, as will appear from the following : 
"Many fresh-water fishes seem to have as strong an 
instinct for locality as have birds and mammals. It is 
tolerably evident that the shad possesses the same disposi- 
tion to find its way back to familiar waters. Observation 
of the shad brought to the large markets show consider- 
able differences in the physiognomy and general contour 
of those from different rivers. The suggestion is natural 
that they are distinct and separate colonies of the same 
species, and thus slight characteristics are perpetual be- 
cause they breed in and in. and do not mix with those 
from other rivers."— U. S. Fish Commissioners' Rep., 
Part EtL, 1874, page 323. 
It is therefore to be assumed that the progeny of the At- 
lantic shad, turned adrift upon the vast network of the 
Mississippi Valley waters, would, upon their seasonal 
return from the deep, essay to attain the cradle of their 
race. Unfitted by reason of physical endowment to ac- 
complish their mighty fluvial journey at a single stretch, 
the task was prbsecuted in successive stages by successive 
generations, each probably spawning at a higher elevation 
than the other. It certainly must have been the speediest 
that most seasonably attained the best spawning grounds, 
and consequently became those that contributed most to 
the development of the so-called new species. Not im- 
probably, it was thus that, in the course of time, a distinc- 
tive fish, speedier and more shapely, came into being, 
capable of cleaving a three-mile current throughout its 
long voyage of eighteen hundred miles to its point of 
ultimate attainment in the upper waters of the Kanawha, 
not unlikely passing in its effort through four or five 
thousand miles of water. Nevertheless, the question re- 
mains, what impels the fish, out of the multitude of the 
tributaries of the Father of Waters that it passes in its 
prolonged and arduous journey from the ocean, to select 
one particular stream buried in the recesses of a remote 
mountain chain? And to this question I will hazard a 
conjectural answer. 
Feeling assured that the Ohio shad are of recent intro- 
duction, I herewith present a statement of the various 
plantings of the fry of that fish made in the Mississippi 
and its tributaries in the years 1872, 1873, 1874,, 1875 and 
1876, or prior to the first authentic appearance of the so- 
called new species in 1876. Dr. Evermann is in error in 
his assumption that the first plantings were made in 1874. 
In 1872, beside others the same year in the great valley, 
two were made -at Salamanca, N. Y., on the Allegheny 
River, one in June, the other in July, and it was to these 
latter that Prof. Baird, then United States Fish Com- 
missioner, ascribed, six years later, the origin of the 
Ohio shad. 
Arkansas. White River 1 
Colorado, Platte River 1 
Illinois, Rock River.... 2 
Indiana, White River : : ! 
Indiana, Wabash River 2 
Iowa, Des Moines River 4 
Minnesota. Mississippi River.. 2 
Mississippi, Pearl River 2 
Mississippi, Yazoo River 1 
Missouri, Black River 1 
Missouri, Chariton River I 
Missouri. Mcrarnec River 1. 
Missouri, Missouri River 1 
Missouri, Karr River 1 
New York, Allegheny River... 2 
Pennsylvania. Monongahela, 
River 1 
Ohio. Buckingahela River 1 
Ohio, Scioto River 1 
Ohio, Black River 1 
Ohio, Huron River... 1 
Ohio, Muskingum River 2 
Tennessee, Holston River 2 
Tennessee, Cumberland River. .2 
Tennessee, Eastanalbee River.. 1 
Tennessee, Forked Deer River. 1 
Tennessee, Tennessee River.... 1 
Tennessee, Big Hatchee River. 1 
Virginia, Kanawha River 1 
West Virginia, Kanawha River. 1 
It is a significant fact that all the forty-two plantings 
enumerated above were of shad fry from New England. 
New York or Pennsylvania rivers, excepting the two last 
in the list, which were from the Potomac. The first of 
these two plantings was made June 6, 1873, at Ronce- 
verte, W. Va., In the Greenbrier River, an upper tributary 
of the Kanawha ; the second was at Central Station, Va., 
in the New River, also a Kanawha tributary, and from 
these two plantings the Ohio River shad have, in all prob- 
ability, sprung. It will be observed by a reference to the 
map that the headwaters of the Kanawha intertwine with 
those of the Potomac, the river from which the former 
stream was stocked. Therefore, the headwaters of each 
of the two streams, the one flowing toward the great Gulf, 
the other toward the Atlantic, percolate through the same 
land areas, they thus hold in solution, or at least absorb 
in some way, a suggestion, a distinctive flavor, so to speak, 
of that particular locality. When, the tiny shad fry, by 
virtue of an inherited instinct, surrendered itself in the 
fall of 1873 to the hurrying current of the Kanawha, it 
found itself at the conclusion of its protracted voyage 
launched upon the Gulf's broad bosom. The ancestral 
place of marine resort was unattainable, the Floridian 
peninsula barred approach to its kindred, but it evidently 
found a home and the conditions of its full growth and 
development in the waters of its alien abode. Attaining 
adult age, there was awakened the parental instinct, and 
with it a craving for the cradle of its particular race or 
colony. Approaching the land it perhaps recognized in the 
outborne current of the mighty Mississippi a subtle sugges- 
tion of the locality it sought, and it followed in the track 
of the mysterious impartment until the limit of its 
physical effort was attained, when it either failed of its 
mission or fulfilled it in the most available locality. Gen- 
eration after generation the ancestral home-hunger per- 
sisted, generation after generation bodily modifications 
admitted of further attainment, for there was ever wafted 
down the current so indomitably contended with faint re- 
minders of the longed-for bourn, and thus, unceasingly 
stimulated, the fish, after twenty-three years of effort, 
reached it in 1896. 
The modification of the contour of the descendants of 
the planted shad, its acquirement of a form more adapted 
for speed was not the only factor contributing to the final 
accomplishment of their goal. Physiological as well as 
merely physical changes enabled the Ohio shad to ulti- 
mately deposit their spawn in the far-away mountains 
whose crests overlooked the probable cradle of their race. 
The tiny fledglings that first wandered down mighty 
waters, not unlikely, upon their maturity, returned to 
the river's mouth with spawn at the stage of develop- 
ment, at which the ancestral fish were accustomed to be- 
gin their fluvial journey. This naturally will vary with 
the shad of different rivers. Those of the Hudson quit 
the ocean's brine with well-developed roes, for their 
highest spawning grounds are less than 150 miles from 
Sandy Hook. The shad passing the latter point bound for 
the Shrewsbury River may accomplish their vital errand 
with an excursion of but a dozen miles, while a voyage 
of three or four hundred may be the allotment of those of 
the Susquehanna, after passing the capes of the Chesa- 
peake. 
It cannot for a moment be supposed that the little wan- 
derers during their long descent of mighty rivers hitherto 
unvoyaged by their kind, could have calculated the time 
necessary to regain, upon the return journey, their start- 
ing point, so that they might there arrive with ripe spawn 
ready for deposition, as was the accustomed habit of their 
forbears. For ages the pilgrimages of the ancestral fish 
of the Ohio had been between definite points in ocean 
and river waters, and a proper adaptation of their spawn 
to the requirements of the voyage must have been their 
hereditary endowment. With their transplanted des- 
cendants, such belated fish as were precluded from spawn- 
ing in proper waters would, not improbably, set out the 
next season .more seasonably. Those of each generation 
that effected the most timely departure, that most con- 
served the development of the quickening life within, and 
finally, those that were the most expeditious of movement, 
were those that became the founders of the new race. 
Nevertheless, it seems probable that the shad attained 
the falls of the Ohio, fourteen hundred miles from the 
Mississippi's mouth, in 1876, three years after being 
planted in the upper Kanawha. It seems impossible in 
view of this, as well as divers other phenomena of bird 
and fish migration, to resist the conclusion that, apart 
from their sense of the direction of the locality sought, 
the far-wandering pilgrims have an approximate percep- 
tion of its distance. Electricians can, very nearly, de- 
termine the distance of a break in an oceanic cable, and 
it is proper to assume that, under the stress of vital need, 
nature can develop in migrating animals susceptibilities 
even more delicate than those incident to man's most cun- 
ning handiwork. 
The presumption of Prof. Baird, already referred to, 
that the Ohio shad were the progeny of the Allegheny 
River plantings in 1872, I deem improbable for two rea- 
sons : First, the Allegheny was stocked a year before the 
Kanawha, and seems to be yet unvisited by shad, al- 
though the shad of the latter appeared six years ago. 
Second, the two plantings alluded to were of Connecticut 
and Hudson River shad respectively, each of which drain 
a territory totally distinct from that of the Mississippi, 
and which at no point touch upon the latter's watershed. 
In the vast volume of sediment that is borne to the Gulf 
there is not a single grain of soil derived from the Hud- 
son River or Connecticut basins, or from the margins 
thereof; but the underground waters of the Blue Ridge 
bears its substance toward the setting as well as toward 
the rising sun. 
Upon the theory of the persistent operation of an in- 
herited instinct, it would follow that no matter where 
in the valley of the Mississippi any Pol^moc River shad 
were planted, they would revert to the neighborhood of 
the ancestral abiding place. After those of the Kanawha 
no such plantings were made in the great valley until 
seven years later in 1880, when several hundred thousand 
were deposited in the famous Salt River of Kentucky, 
but unlike the defeated politicians of yore, it does not 
seem that the presumably resulting fish have since gone up 
that lethean stream. It is possible, however, that they 
may yet do so, in which case it would discredit the theory 
•I advance. Of those who may be inclined to deride that 
theory, I have to ask why were the forty plantings enu- 
merated in the table herein presented, effected at differ- 
ent times in twenty-seven different rivers, all seemingly 
barren of res'ult? Evidently special conditions effected 
success with the Kanawha plantings, and the only excep- 
tional conditions appear to be those I have mentioned. I 
am aware that shad have been reported in other Ohio 
tributaries than the Kanawha, but the reports appear to 
lack confirmation. After the stocking of a multitude of 
Atlantic and Gulf rivers with Pacific salmon a number of 
years ago, captures of alleged resulting fish were an- 
nounced from the Passamaquoddy to the Rio Grande, but 
they were all ghosts, and the only Pacific salmon to be 
found to-day in the flesh are those that thrive in Western 
waters. A. H. Gouraud. 
Angling Near New York, 
Fishing in the waters around New York continues to 
be generally good. In most localities there is a steady 
improvement, which is most satisfactory to local anglers. 
The weakfish are taking the bait plentifully, and sea bass 
have also begun to bite. Striped bass are yet scarce, but 
blackfish and ling continue to be caught in large numbers. 
In the Staten Island waters the weakfish are numerous 
and of good size. At Giffords Station, one of the favorite 
points, the fish are biting freely. On Friday of last week 
J. J. McCarrick and H. Wellbrock took twenty-one weak- 
fish, averaging three pounds each. Reports from other 
points on the island show a similar condition. 
Large catches of weakfish are daily reported from 
Jamaica Bay, one party of four anglers bringing in almost 
fifty weakfish and a number of herring last Thursday. 
Last Tuesday two New York city anglers took a dozen 
weakfish and fifteen herring. They also caught what was 
probably the first porgy of the season in these waters. At 
Far Rockaway a few striped bass have been caught. 
Passengers on the steamers which run to the Fishing 
Banks have brought in good catches of sea bass, blackfish 
and ling, the ling in great quantities. Sea bass, the favor- 
ite fish of the deep-sea anglers, are not as plentiful as they 
will be a few weeks later. However, some good messes 
have been taken on the Banks. At Long Beach, Long 
Island, the sea bass have just begun to bite; the first to be 
taken there this season were caught last \veek. 
G. F. Diehl. 
Address all communications to the Forest and, 
Stream Publishing Company, 
