338 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
or less interested in trout- culture. The interest iu trout-breeding became universal, 
and everything written about it was eagerly read by all who were interested in fish at 
all. These were the palmy days of trout-breeding in this country. Prices were high. 
Trout eggs brought $10 per 1,000 and young trout fry $40 per 1,000. Trout large 
enough for the table brought $1 a pound at the ponds, and the city hotels paid 75 cents 
a pound for regular weekly consignments. There was a large demand for trout eggs 
and a fair demand for young fry and for trout for the table. Trout-breeding prospered, 
and with it all there was a novelty about the work which had not then had time to 
wear oif, and the business of trout-breeding, for it had now become a legitimate busi- 
ness, came to be a pleasant, prosperous, and profitable occupation. 
It would be interesting to describe more minutely the rise and decline of private 
trout-culture in the United States — for, alas! the decline came only too soon — but 
that would not come within the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say that competition 
soon brought prices of eggs and fry down too low to make the business profitable 
generally, and the market price for table trout falling at the same time, many who 
engaged in the business fell out for want of sufficient pecuniary encouragement, while 
others who raised trout for the enjoyment of it gave it up because of the many risks 
and difficulties which stood in the way of success. 
It is a fact worth recording, and one that seems very strange in the light of present 
events, that while so many at first went to raising trout, no one seemed to even think 
that it was worth while to hatch any other kind of fish; and it is also a fact worth 
noticing that if artificial fish-culture had been confined to the raising of trout, as it 
was the first three years of its career in this country, the vast and beneficent work 
that is being done at present would have been unknown. 
It again remained for the bold aud adventurous spirit of Seth Green, with his 
far-reaching vision, to enter the larger and more important field of hatching fish that 
had a standard commercial value. Everyone knows of his attempts, his failures, aud 
his final success iu hatching shad. These efforts of Green, in demonstrating that 
other and more valuable fish could be hatched as easily as trout, did indeed open up 
a field for fish culture so vast and beneficial to mankind that the previous trout- 
cultural work shrank into insignificance beside it. Thus it was that Seth Green 
earned a second time his claim to the title of “ father of American fish culture.” All 
the present magnificent work of our State fish commissions and the United States 
Fish Commission owes its origin to Seth Green’s shad hatchery on the Connecticut 
in 1867. 
In 1868 the writer, in connection with Mr. Joseph Goodfellow, erected a salmon- 
breeding station on the Miramichi River, in Hew Brunswick. This was on a large 
scale aud was the first effort at systematic, practical salmon-breeding in America. As 
illustrating the high prices for fish eggs that prevailed then, 1 may mention that the 
writer received over $1,000 for a good-sized water-pail of salmon eggs from the Mira 
michi in 1869. This station would have been a valuable source of supply for salmon 
eggs had not public sentiment iu Canada been so strong against exporting Canadian 
salmon eggs to the United States that the enterprise had to be abandoned; but the 
Canadian government took it up soon afterwards and sold salmon eggs to this country 
for the enormous price of $45 per 1,000, or nearly $1,000 per gallon. 
I must not forget to mention, as among the most important events of the early 
days of fish-culture in this country, that the State of Hew Hampshire, with singular 
foresight, established a fish commission in 1864, the same year that Seth Green began 
