6 i8 
Salmon Culture. 
A great deal has been said and written lately 
relative to" the culture of salmon. Mr. R. B. 
Marston, editor of the London Fishing Gazette, 
has written Forest and Stream as follows: 
“May I beg of you to see if you can get really 
reliable information proving that the taking of 
salmon eggs from wild salmon, fertilizing them, 
hatching them and then letting the fry or 
young fish out into the rivers ever results in 
(i) the return of a single fish so treated as 
grilse or salmon; (2) the return of a proportion 
sufficient to justify the operation. 
“For twenty years I believed in the good re¬ 
sults of salmon culture, relying mainly on the 
reports sent to me by my friend, the late Mr. 
Nelson Cheney, who was, I fear, quite misled. 
See letter on the subject and my reply this week. 
Of course fish breeders, and especially salmon 
hatchery officials, want to make out that this 
artificial work is a great benefit. I want to be¬ 
lieve it is also, but I want to see proof which 
will satisfy one reasonably expert in such 
matters. “R. B. Marston, 
“Editor Fishing Gazette.” 
The following appeared recently in the Fish¬ 
ing Gazette: 
“Some time ago I challenged your corre¬ 
spondent ‘G. M.,” and offer the same challenge 
to you, to give reasons for condemning the 
culture of Y. solar. Evidence and statistics point 
to the greatest success where operations are 
carried on properly. Why does 'G. M. (and 
you also) not come out ‘in the open.’ and let 
us hear how you both support vour wholesale, 
and apparently blind, condemnation? 
“L. M. B. 
“[I think it is for ‘L. M. B.’ to point to any 
absolute proof of the stocking of rivers with 
salmon by artificial propagation. It has been 
attempted now for over fifty years, and I can 
find no satisfactory evidence of success-—I mean 
the reappearance of salmon in rivers where 
they have become extinct. Formerly I for many 
years believed the general statements which have 
been made from time to time as to the success 
of salmon culture. Now I want proof of 
marked artificially-bred samlets returning in any 
appreciable number. Where natural breeding 
still goes on in a river it is impossible to prove 
that artificial culture is or is not any good, un¬ 
less the fish artificially cultivated can be marked 
so that they can be identified with certainty. 
Being extremely interested in the subject, and 
for over twenty years an enthusiastic believer 
in the value of artificial stocking with salmon, I 
should be only too delighted if ‘L. M. B.’ can 
adduce proof which will satisfy Sir Herbert 
Maxwell (who first called my attention to the 
absence of proof of success of salmon culture) 
and Mr. Wm. Archer, Inspector of Fisheries 
for England and Wales, who, when living in 
Norway, carried on salmon culture until he 
was forced to the conclusion that it was useless. 
‘L. M. B.’ may not be aware that two years ago 
in America a former Canadian Fisheries Com¬ 
missioner challenged the Canadian and Ameri¬ 
can Fisheries Commissioners to produce any 
proof of the value of artificial salmon culture. 
Nothing but vague generalities were forthcom¬ 
ing. It was admitted that all attempts to restock 
the United States Atlantic coast salmon rivers 
had been failures, in spite of many mistaken 
published statements to the contrary. In fact, 
it was such mistaken statements made by my 
old friend the late American Fish Commissioner 
Mr. A. Nelson Cheney-—that for many years 
made me a firm believer in the value of salmon 
culture when Russian and Scandinavian experts 
were questioning the value of such means of re¬ 
stocking rivers.— Ed.]” ' 
Lack of space prevents us from printing, at 
this time, much interesting data relative to this 
subject, and this will be deferred, the following 
testimony, however, being given now: 
Before the National Fisheries Congress in 
Tampa, Fla., in 1896. the late A Nelson 
Cheney, State Fish Cultnrist of New York, de¬ 
livered an address on “The Hudson River as a 
Salmon Stream.” Mr. Cheney gave a number 
of authorities alleging that salmon had been 
found in the Hudson in early days. He quotes 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
from the log of the Halfmoon, Hendrick Hud¬ 
son’s ship, in which it was stated that the sal¬ 
mon were seen in the river in 1609 twenty 
leagues from New York Bay, but Mr. Cheney 
proved that none of these was captured by any 
of Hudson’s men. “In some of the Canadian 
rivers,” said Mr. Cheney, “there is a late run of 
salmon, the fish running as late as October, but 
this was not true of the Connecticut or of other 
New England salmon streams, nor has it proved 
true of the Hudson since it was stocked by arti¬ 
ficial means.” Again he says, “In 1680 Jaspar 
Danker and Peter Sluyter, members of the So¬ 
ciety of Labadists, in Holland, visited this coun¬ 
try "and they record of the Mohawk, a tributary 
of the Hudson; ‘there are no fish in its except 
trout, sunfish and other kinds peculiar to rivers, 
because the Cahoos stop the ascent of others.’ 
They dined in state ‘with Madam Rensselaer at 
Albany and had to eat exceedingly good pike- 
perch and other fish,’ but no salmon. 
“New York has salmon streams on the north 
flowing into the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain 
and Lake Ontario, for I have found laws for 
their protection enacted in 1801 and later, and 
mentioning the Oswego, Grass, Racket, St. 
Regis rivers and Fish and Wood creeks, as well 
as other streams. A law enacted in 1801 pro¬ 
vided that no dams should be erected on streams 
flowing into lakes Ontario, Erie or Champlain 
to prevent salmon from following their usual 
course up said streams, and when dams were 
erected they should be provided with what are 
now called fishways to enable the fish to pass 
over the obstruction. There is every indica¬ 
tion that the lawmakers of the last century and 
the first of this understood fully the value of 
the fish in the waters *of the State as food and 
threw every possible safeguard around them, but 
there is no record of a law protecting salmon 
in the Hudson until 1771. * * * There is no 
record, however, that anything was actually done 
under this resolution to stock the Hudson with 
salmon. What has been done to make the Hud¬ 
son a salmon stream has been done within the 
pa,st twenty-five years, and I will rehearse the 
operations of the National and State Fish Com¬ 
missions to this end as briefly as possible. 
“Beginning with 1873 and continuing for tnree 
years after the fish commission of New York 
planted in the tributaries of the Hudson a 
quantity of fry of the Pacific salmon hatched 
from eggs furnished by the United States Fish 
Commission. Several hundred thousand fry 
were planted, but so far as known after going 
to sea as smolts not a single fish returned to 
the river, and this is true also of other plant¬ 
ings of this species of salmon in our Atlantic 
coast rivers. In 1891 the late Col. Marshall 
MacDonald, then United States Commissioner of 
Fisheries, requested me to make an examination 
of some tributaries of the upper Hudson with a 
view to making a plant of yearling quinnat sal¬ 
mon. He was thoroughly convinced that the 
attempt to stock the Atlantic rivers with the 
fry of this fish was an abject failure, but at the 
Wytheville Station of the Commission in Vir¬ 
ginia rainbow trout from California had been 
established in the hatchery stream by planting 
fingerling fish after plantings of fry of this 
species of fish had failed and he desired to try 
a like experiment with the salmon also from the 
Pacific coast. I selected several streams in Ver¬ 
mont tributary to the Battenkill River, which in 
turn flows into the Hudson. The streams were 
free from everything injurious to young salmon, 
and there were no natural or artificial obstruc¬ 
tions in them. Later I went to Vermont with 
one of the United States Fish Commission cars 
and planted several thousand yearling (Cali¬ 
fornia) salmon in the streams selected for the 
purpose. Not one of them has ever been heard 
of since they went down to the sea. 
“The experiment of stocking the Hudson with 
Atlantic salmon ( Salmo salar ) was begun in 
1882, at which time 225,000 fry were planted in 
small streams tributary to the head of the river 
about 260 miles above Sandy Hook. Nothing 
was heard from this planting until 1886, or four 
years, when adult fish returned to the river 
weighing 9 to 16 pounds and ascended to Troy, 
where they were stopped by the State dam. 
Every year since, with one exception, plants of 
[April 20, 1907. 
salmon fry or yearlings have been made in the 
river and every year adult fish have been 
captured in the lower river by nets. 
“One thing has been proven to my satisfac¬ 
tion beyond peradventure by these experiments. 
The young of the Salmo salar, when planted 
in the Hudson, do not go to the sea until they 
are two years old, and they return from the sea 
when they are four years old. If I should make 
this statement before an European audience I 
would be accused of rank heresy, and possibly 
right here in Tampa delegates to the National 
Fishery Congress will desire to know what 
proof i have of this assertion. I planted salmon 
fry in a trout stream tributary to the Hudson 
which had never contained salmon, and it was 
two years before they arrived at the smolt stage 
and took their departure for the sea in silvery 
livery. Selecting another stream, I made a like 
plant, and it was two years before the parr put 
on the smolt dress, and turning their tails to 
the sea, drifted down with the current. During 
the past fourteen years I have planted solar fry 
in various streams and always when in a new 
stream where they could be watched that no 
mistake would be made they have remained for 
two years before going to sea. 
“Since the first plant of solar fry a total of 
3,486,000 have been planted in the Hudson 
River, this number including 12,000 yearlings. 
All the eggs were furnished by the United States 
Fish Commission and came from the Penobscot 
River in Maine. For a number of years after 
the initial plant the United States paid all the 
expenses of hatching and distributing the young 
fish, but later the Government furnished the 
eggs and the Fisheries, Game and Forest Com¬ 
mission of New York hatched and planted the 
fish at the expense of the State. 
“It is on record that in one year over 300 
adult salmon from 10 to 38 pounds each were 
taken in nets in the lower Hudson, every fish 
taken contrary to law. It is true that some 
salmon taken in nets are released by the fisher¬ 
man, but the high price offered for Hudson 
River salmon in the New York market sorely 
tenjpts a fisherman to kill such salmon as may 
be taken in his net instead of releasing them 
uninjured, as the law directs. Fishways have 
been erected in the Hudson by the State at 
Troy, Mechanicsville and Thompson’s Mills, but 
other fishways must be built before the river 
is open to the fish from the sea to the pure 
water of the upper river where the salmon will 
naturally go to find a spawning ground. The 
Cohoes Falls on the Mohawk is to-day as much 
of a bar to the upward migration of salmon as 
when Jaspar Danker made the entry in his 
journal in 1680, which I have quoted. Baker 
Falls on the main river has been supposed to 
be one of the causes why salmon never fre¬ 
quented the river at the time they ran into the 
Connecticut. These falls stop the shad and it 
has been said that they would stop salmon. 
Possibly they would, but I visited the falls with 
the late Commissioner MacDonald and we were 
both of the opinion that it was possible for 
salmon to surmount them on the proper stage of 
water. 
“Why the. Hudson was not originally a sal¬ 
mon stream when the Connecticut, a neighbor¬ 
ing river, was, I shall not attempt to explain. 
It may have been that Cohoes and other falls 
on the main river and its tributaries operated as 
a bar to keep them from their proper spawning 
ground, but one thing has been fully demon¬ 
strated—the Hudson River of to-day with its 
sewage from towns and poison from mills and 
factories does not deter salmon from entering 
from the sea once the fry are planted in its 
headwaters, and with fishways _ in all the ob¬ 
structions, natural and artificial, it could be 
made a self-sustaining salmon river if the netters 
would obey the law, while the State Fisheries j 
Commission aided nature in keeping up the 
supply of young fish by artificially hatching the 
eggs." Col. MacDonald told me on more than j 
one occasion that if the Pludson were open to 
salmon and proper efforts were made to keep j 
up the supply of young fish and netting regula¬ 
tions were enforced, the river would from its 
salmon add $100,000 a year of profit to the^State 
while largely augmenting the food supply.” 
