BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 423 
CONCLUSION. 
While I have expressed surprise that anything could live after pass- 
ing Palmer’s Falls I do not wish to be understood as saying that it is 
impossible for it to do so. The varying current, which would dash a 
man to pieces on the rocks, may be safely run by a salmon going down 
tail first and keeping steerage way all the time by a vigorous up-stream 
motion, but if one simply looks at these formidable falls with the 
idea that a salmon would go down them as he or any other mammal 
would, he would shudder at the thought. The fact that all fishes go 
down stream, in rapid water, tail first, when not hooked or frightened, 
must save them many a contusion, which a cow would get. I have 
seen a trout go over a small dam, when, of course, it did not know what 
might be below, and it would back down until its fear would cause it to 
resist the rapid current, and so would feel of it, always heading up- 
stream, until at last it let the water have its way, in part, only, and 
with head up-stream and caudal fin in active motion, it was prepared 
to meet the wild rush of water with such muscular energy as it could 
muster. Taking this view of the case it is possible that young salmon 
may safely go down any impediment in the Hudson, but, if they go 
down at a low stage of water, when the whole river is turned into the 
wheels of the mills, “ ay, there’s the rub,” for in that rush of turbines 
what grinding comes when salmon have “jumped this bank and shoal,” 
is more than we can say. 
While holding fast to that which is good, and this means stocking 
the streams which have reared fish and sent them to sea in sufficient 
numbers to return again, I would suggest that the Sacandaga River be 
stocked. I know that its lower waters, especially below Mill Creek, 
where the new hatchery of the New York Fish Commission is located, 
contain pickerel ( JEsox lucius ), but so does the Hudson, from Albany, 
up to above North Creek. If the Sacandaga is to be stocked I would 
say that the nearest way to reach its headwaters is via North River, 6 
miles above North Creek, where the Adirondack Railroad ends, and 
thence by wagon to the “Drake Place,” 3 miles east of Oregon, and 
make the plant in Diamond Mountain Brook and in Siamese Brook, and 
also in Buck Meadow Brook and Botheration Pond. The latter is the 
head of the Sacandaga River. There is no need for me to write an essay 
on the benefits of planting salmon in the headwaters of streams where 
they get insect and crustacean food and escape their larger enemies. 
I think that the tributaries of the Hoosic River, which enters the 
Hudson as low down as Stillwater, and other streams in Washington 
County, N. Y., might prove to be good rearing streams for salmon, but 
I have no personal knowledge of them. The same might be said of 
streams in the Catskills, of which I also know little beyond the fact 
that there are good trout streams there. If it is desirable to extend the 
number of streams to be stocked or to substitute others for those which, 
