152 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
Hon. A. Nelson Cheney, of New York, was then presented and made the following- 
response to the governor’s address of welcome: 
Your Excellency, Ladies, and Gentlemen : On behalf of the delegates of the National Fishery Con- 
gress I desire to thank you, and also the people of Florida, for your most gracious welcome. As you 
have said, the food problem is a most important one to this country and all countries, and the fish food 
is not the least important. 
Called upon unexpectedly, as I have been, I thought that I could do no better than to state to you 
the beginning of fish propagation, leading back some centuries. It is said iu the encyclopedias that 
China and Egypt practiced fish-culture. If they did it is not probable that they practiced the fish- 
culture that we know to-day. The history of our fish-culture has never been written, and I regret 
that I must trust to my memory as to dates. It is recorded that a French marquis hatched fish in 
1420. By those best informed it is believed that he did not do more than to transport the fertilized 
e gg8 of fish from one water to another. The real father of fish-culture was Stephen L. Jacobi, a Ger- 
man fish-breeder, who announced the discovery in 1761. He practiced it for some twenty years before 
that date. His observations were conducted in a little wooden trough, and he himself or his sons 
continued the work for thirty or forty years. He is undoubtedly the father of fish-culture, as we 
understand fish-culture to-day. His methods were translated into French, Italian, and English, and 
George III granted him a life pension. 
Down to 1848 there is little or no record of fish-cultural work. Two French fishermen, Remy and 
Gehin, discovered, as they claimed, the process of hatching fish artificially, and were brought to Paris 
and there conducted a number of experiments, which happened to be witnessed by Dr. E. S. Sterling, 
from Cleveland, Ohio, who had as a classmate in Cleveland a Dr. Garlick. Dr. Sterling went abroad 
to complete his studies, and there witnessed the experiments. In 1853 Dr. Garlick brought trout 
from Lake Superior to a stream or pond near Cleveland, took the eggs of trout, artificially fertilized 
them, and hatched them in 1854. Those were the first fish to he hatched artificially in the United 
States. Dr. Sterling was then in Cleveland and knew nothing about this experiment until he was 
called on by Dr. Garlick to look at the trout. Dr. Sterling is credited as being the author of the 
experiments as practiced by Dr. Garlick. Soon after these experiments were made known, as they 
were in a paper before the Cleveland Academy of Science, it was claimed that the fish had been 
hatched artificially in 1804 in this country, but this was found to be a mistake. 
The first act of any State legislature looking to the propagation of fishes was a resolution passed 
by the legislature of Massachusetts in 1856. The States formed fish commissions from that date, and 
in 1872 the United States Fish Commission was organized — largely at the instigation of the Ameri- 
can Fisheries Society, as it is now called; it was formerly the American Fish-Cultural Association. 
One of the first acts of the society was to appoint delegates to go to Washington and recommend the 
creation of a United States Fish Commission. We all know the workings of the United States 
Fish Commission and the State fish commissions, because almost every State in the Union has a 
commission now. 
The following telegrams were read : 
Washington, D. C., January 20. 
The Secretary of State of the United States has the pleasure to extend cordial greetings to the 
National Fishery Congress now assembled at Tampa, in the hope that its deliberations and results will 
further the important objects proposed to be attained. 
John Sherman. 
London, England, January 20. 
The world will be benefited by your Fishery Congress. Success to it. 
R. Miller Arnold. 
Dusseldorf, Germany, January 19. 
Accept my hearty congratulations for the great movement you have inaugurated. May success 
attend your deliberations. The International Fishery Congress which you propose to organize is 
destined to benefit the whole world. 
Peter Lieber. 
Washington, D. C., January 19, 1898. 
Accept my best wishes for success of National Fishery Congr< 
Theodore Roosevelt. 
