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REPORT. 
_ 
To his Excellency , John Lee Carroll, 
Governor of Maryland : 
In each successive Report of the labors of the Commission 
on Fisheries, in addition to a detailed statement of the actual 
work performed, we have given a minute description of the 
apparatus used in artificially increasing the supply of food 
fishes, and have traced, step by step, the advance that has 
been made in perfecting it. 
We have also stated the results of investigations as to the 
development of the different varieties of food-fishes, and the 
varying degrees of success attending our efforts to propagate 
artificially those species which had not hitherto been the sub- 
jects of such experiment. 
Although we cannot now report any appreciable improve- 
ment during the past year in the apparatus used, we are 
able to state that most satisfactory results have been realized 
from the employment of the methods already described. 
Heretofore the results obtained in other localities have formed 
the only basis on which we could promise an increase in the 
supply of our native food-fishes; but we are now enabled, from 
convincing statistics, to show the absolute increase in our own 
waters of shad — the fish which has been the object of our spe- 
cial care. 
The sudden and marked increase in the supply of this val- 
uable fish in the Chesapeake Bay is a result most flattering to 
the labors of the Commission. In the Report made to your 
Excellency in January, 187?, on page 6, we chronicled the 
noticeable increase in the supply of shad as reported by the 
fishermen in the neighborhood of Annapolis. As stated at 
that time, the return of adult shad could be expected during 
their third year, and the increase just mentioned was doubt- 
less the result of our hatching operations in the spring of 1875. 
