472 
Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
to turn ^heir attention to at present. Among these are the white- 
fish, salmon-trout, lake herring, black-bass, and the brook-trout. 
The latter may be raised in our spring-bed lakes and such brooks 
as the owners will allow the people to fish in, during certain 
months, when fishing will not interfere with crops; but the trout 
should remain in abeyance to the others, as it is more valuable for 
sport than food. 
The Commissioners feeling the importance of stocking the inte¬ 
rior lakes, and wishing to lose no time after examination and in¬ 
quiry of the fishermen on Lake Michigan, started a temporary 
hatching-house at Pensaukee, on the railroad, twenty-five miles, 
above Green Bay. 
A leading object with us in selecting this point was that there 
was an old mill-house that we could get the use of free of other 
charge, than trifling repairs, and a mill-pond to take hatching- 
water from, in easy reach of the fisheries. 
We are sorry to say that in the procuring of the Mackinaw trout- 
spawn, we made a total failure. There were no ripe trout caught 
there this season. The fishermen seemed as much disappointed as 
we were, and Mr. Crumbough, a very intelligent gentleman, and 
who has been connected with the lake-fisheries for twenty-five 
years, said he was unable to account for it. We suppose they have 
changed their spawning-beds, and the fishermen did not know it. 
Neither have we taken as many white-fish spawn as we had hoped 
to; this probably is in part owing to our inexperience in the taking 
of this kind of spawn, but mainly to the early closing in of winter, 
which forced the fishermen to take up their nets in the midst of 
the spawning season of both the white-fish and herring. This 
partial failure suggests the importance elsewhere noticed, of having 
more locations for the taking and vitalizing of spawn. Spawn can¬ 
not be carried a distance until the embric is about half'developed. 
We append the statement of Mr. John Palmer, who has had 
charge of the taking of spawn, from which it will be seen, that in 
addition to the white-fish spawn, he has laken about two hundred 
thousand of the lake-herring spawn. This fish is known in Madi¬ 
son as white-fish, and Fourth Lake is very full of them, a few of 
them having been put in there by ex-Governor Farwell, who no 
doubt thought them to be white-fish, as many still do. While in 
flesh and size they are not quite the equal of the white-fish, they 
