438 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
Tlie muskellunge is a magnificent food and game fish, sometimes reaching a 
weight of nearly 100 pounds. Further efforts will doubtless be made to secure its 
colonization in California. 
THE PIKE OR PICKEREL. 
On September 15, 1892, 70 yearling pike ( Lucius lucius ), sent from the station of 
the United States Fish Commission at Quincy, 111., were placed in the Boise Elver, 
near Boise, Idaho. In the preceding December a plant of 400 pike was made in Lake 
Cuyamaca, California, near San Diego, and another of 100 in the Feather Eiver, in 
Butte County, Cal. These fish were also yearlings from Quincy. 
Mr. Arthur G. Fletcher, of the California fish commission, visited Lake Cuya- 
maca in January, 1890, and found that the pike had survived. In two hauls of a small 
seine near the shore, 4 fish under 8 inches long were taken; 2 of these, which were 
forwarded to San Francisco, were females with well-developed ova. Pike are said to 
be more numerous than any of the other eastern fishes — black bass, yellow perch, 
catfish, and crappie — that were planted in the lake at the same time as the pike. Mr. 
J. E. Friend, of San Diego, recently caught with rod and line 2 pike that weighed 2 
pounds apiece. Professor Jordan has identified as the little pickerel ( Lucius vermi- 
culatus) one of the small specimens obtained by Mr. Fletcher. 
THE EEL. 
HISTORY OF INTRODUCTION. 
As early as 1871 the California fish commission contemplated the introduction 
of the common eel ( Anguilla chrysypa) into the Sacramento Eiver,* and in 1873 an 
effort was made to import eels from the east coast. Acting in behalf of the California 
fish commission, Mr. Livingston Stone, of the United States Commission of Fish 
and Fisheries, started from Charleston, N. H., with an “ aquarium car,” containing, 
besides a large number of other fish, 1,500 eels from Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and 
40,000 from the Hudson Eiver, New York. The car passed beyond Omaha with the 
eels in good condition, and the prospects were favorable for the safe arrival on the 
Pacific Coast of between 20,000 and 30,000 eels, when the car was wrecked in a rail- 
road accident and the entire stock was lost. 
In 1874 the attempt to introduce the fish was renewed and successfully carried 
out by Mr. Stone in the new ‘-'aquarium car,” to which frequent reference is made in 
this paper. The original consignment consisted of about 2,000 small “fresh- water” 
eels from Castletou, 1ST. Y., on the Hudson Eiver, and several thousand small “ salt- 
water ” eels from New York Harbor. The loss of the former lot in transit was almost 
complete, but the eels taken from salt water stood the journey well. On June 12 
the fish from the Hudson Eiver, then reduced to 12 in number, were placed in a slough 
of the Sacramento Eiver near Sacramento. The eels from New York Harbor, about 
1,500 in number, were deposited in an inlet of San Francisco Bay, near Oakland.! 
* Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries of the State of California, 1870-71, p. It. 
t In a tabulated statement accompanying Mr. Stone’s report of the trip with the aquarium car, 
these eels are said to have been placed in lakes at Sutterville, a town on the Sacramento River, near 
Sacramento. (Rept. Cal. Fish Com., 1874-75, pp. 6,30, 32.) 
