218 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
small tributary of the Sacramento called Battle Creek, and is about 7 miles from the 
towu of Auderson, in Shasta Couuty, though it is itself just over the Tehama County 
line. This Battle Creek is the most extraordinaiy and prolific place for collecting 
quiunat-salmon eggs yet known, though the eggs are limited to the fall run of salmon, 
as none worth mentioning of the summer run of fish ascend Battle Creek. The first 
salmon make their appearance early in the fall, and before November and during that 
month they are found in almost incredible numbers in the wide lagoon extending 
about 2'^ miles up the creek from its mouth. I am well aware that fish-culturists’ 
predictions are generally overdrawn and consequently disappointing in the end, but 
it seems to me safe to say that 20,000,000 salmon eggs can be taken on Battle Creek 
in six weeks of a favorable year; 10,000,000 eggs were actually taken there in three 
weeks last year, and the (lalifornia Fish Commission only stopped then because their 
hatching-house was filled. Battle Creek will not produce eggs of the summer-run 
salmon, but it will yield an almost unlimited number of fall-run eggs, until unfavorable 
conditions prevent the breeding salmon from ascending the stream. 
To return to the Clackamas station, in Oregon, I will say that unfavorable condi- 
tions have already setiii there and seriously interfered with the operations of the station. 
When it first passed into the hands of the United States Fish Commission it yielded 
5,000,000 salmon eggs a jmar, but it was too near civilization to prosper long as a 
salmon-breeding station, and gradually mills and dams, timber cutting on the upper 
waters of the Clackamas, and logging in the river, together with other adverse 
influences, so crippled its efficiency that it was given up this year as a collecting-j)oint 
for salmon eggs, but several million eggs have been sent there from Baird station and 
Battle Creek, so that a very respectable number of salmon eggs will doubtless be 
hatched for the benefit of Columbia Eiver this season. 
I may add here that several attempts have been made to discover and establish 
salmon-breeding points in the basin of the Columbia, but none has been found suffi- 
ciently lu'oductive to warrant their continuance. Some effort also has been made to 
secure quiunat-salmon eggs from the smaller California streams flowing into the Pacific 
Ocean, but no great success has been attained there yet, although many quinnat and 
steelhead eggs have been secured and favorable results obtained, notably at Fort 
Gaston station and its branches, in acclimatizing several species of the Sahnonidw 
not indigenous to this coast. 
The question now naturally arises, What are the results of all this great labor and 
expenditure extended over so many years'? Allow me to reply as follows: 
When the work of the United States Fish Commission in salmon breeding was 
begun on the Pacific Coast, it Aras supposed that that coast had enough salmon to 
spare, and it was the intention of the Commission to increase the salmon on the 
Atlantic Coast by restocking its depleted salmon rivers. The highest hopes were 
entertained of doing this. After it had become an accomplished fact that millions 
of salmon eggs had been procured on this coast, and that they had been safely 
transported across the continent to the Atlantic rivers, I doubt if there was one person 
who had heard about it in America, Avhether interested in fish-culture or not, who did 
not believe that salmon were going to become abundant again in the Atlantic rivers 
on account of the introduction of the Pacific Coast fish; and not only this, but many 
persons believed that several southern rivers that had never had salmon in them 
before, would now become prolific salmon streams, Avhen they were Avell stocked with 
