NATIONAL FISHERY CONGRESS. 
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operations in Caledonia. New Hampshire was soon followed by Massachusetts and 
other States, and in 1871 the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, through 
the efforts of Prof. Spencer F. Baird, was created by Congress, and the same year, 
also, the American Fish-Culturists’ Association was formed, now the American Fish- 
eries Society. By this time there were also innumerable trout-culturists in the field, 
and fish-culture in the United States may be said to have passed the days of its 
infancy and to be fairly on its feet. 
In looking back over those early years and contrasting them with the present, 
when such an immense mass of information is available, one is forcibly struck by the 
almost universal ignorance on the subject that prevailed at that time. This was true 
not only of people generally, but of well informed men also, for even scientists who 
rightly deserved the name, and university graduates and accomplished scholars who 
prided themselves on the variety of their knowledge, and reading men who kept up 
with the magazines and newspapers, could tell you nothing of this new art of fish- 
culture. Yet this was not so very surprising, for books had not then been published 
in this country on the subject, magazine articles about it had not appeared, cyclo- 
pedias did not contain the information, or at most only the merest outlines of it, and 
unless one happened to come across the not easily-accessible reports of specialists 
there was no avenue open to the public by which more than a superficial knowledge 
of the subject could be reached. People generally were so utterly ignorant indeed of 
the whole subject that almost any story told about fish eggs would pass unchallenged. 
How different from the present day, when the minute fish life of the very bottom of 
the oceans is closely and thoroughly studied, aud the fish food furnished by the 
microscopic life of the fresh water lakes is measured and classified. 
To go back in memory to those early days is not only to enter the enchantment 
that distance brings, but it is also to return to what was a real enchantment then. It 
seems as if we should never feel again — I know I am expressing the feelings of all the 
early experimenters in hatching fish — it seems as if we should never feel again, and 
we probably never shall feel again the thrill of excitement that tingled to our fingers’ 
ends when we first saw the little black speck in the uuhatched embryo, which told us 
that our egg was alive. It was one of the dearest sights on earth to us then. And 
when the first little trout emerged from his shell and wriggled in the water, why 
were we so excited and elated? Was it because we unconsciously felt that we were 
sharing with others in a great discovery? Was it because that little fish opened up 
to us a new world of promise, and because we had a dim vision of the countless 
multitudes of living creatures that this little embryo was the insignificant forerunner 
of? I suppose it was something of the sort, and now after those long years have 
passed aud we coldly watch under a microscope, with half- scientific interest, the 
development of this little black speck, named by scientists the “ choroid pigment,” 
but which will always be dear to us as the u eye-spot,” we can hardly believe that such 
a commonplace, matter-of-fact affair could ever have stirred our feelings and our 
imagination as it did once, when the sight and the sensation were both new, and the 
world of promise before us was untried aud unknown. 
Recalling those early years, two figures stand out in memory more prominently 
than all others. One is the figure of a strong-featured, broad-browed man, of a rugged 
frame and a rugged countenance. He had the bearing and the look of a man who 
thought no struggle too severe for him and no foe too formidable. He looks the strong 
man that he is. He is of the Zachary Taylor “rough-and ready” type, but withal he 
