Figs. 1, 2, 3.-Green's hatching ox, side, end, and bottom; a, side floats, set with screws; b, beveled bottom cross-bar to throw the current upward; c, wire-net bottom, 14 wires to an inch; d, trap for escape of young fish, wires 8 to an inch, with covering slide; e, anchoring cord; f, water line; g, spawn. Fig. 4. Section of Foster's fish-way; a a, side timbers; b, plank floor; c. ten-inch spikes driven from timber to timber and into sill d; e e, bulk heads; ff, openings for water;9 g. outer planking. Fig. 5.-Horizontal screen to prevent trout passing up a fall.

Fig. 6.-Plan of a hatching-house; a, water conduit; b, strainers; c, hatching-troughs; d. door; ee, windows; f, stove; g, supply-trough; h, space cut out of floor for escape of water.

APPARATUS TISED IN FISH CLI TURE

Fig. 6

Labors of Commissioner Green.-Mr. Green, while awaiting legislative aid for fish culture in his own State, has volunteered his services in other sections. He gives the following account of his operations:

"On the 11th of May, 1868, I put four thousand shad-spawn, properly impregnated, into a hatching-box at Long Bridge, on the Potomac, the water being at a temperature of sixty-four degrees; on the 13th they showed signs of life, and I put in seventy thousand more. On the 14th the form of the fish was visible, and on the 17th they hatched. To draw public interest to the matter, I hatched some in a tumbler in the house of General Spinner, at Washington. They left the egg eighty-four hours after impregnation. I hatched fifteen hundred in a salt-box, with a sieve bottom, in a room in the treasury building. On the 13th of May, I had also obtained a quantity of white-perch spawn. This is of a glutinous nature, and sticks fast to brush, weeds, or grass, and can be readily transported in that condition. It hatched in about a week, with the temperature of the water at about sixty-two degrees. In the Potomac the striped bass and herring spawn May 25, the sturgeon May 20, and the catfish June 10. From that river I proceeded to the James, and continued my endeavors to interest the fishermen in propagating shad. Then I returned to New York, stopping on the Susquehanna and the Delaware, the latter a magnificent stream, where shad culture might be carried to any extent, and which might be filled with fish. On June 4, the fishermen were taking up their nets at Carmansville, and along the lower part of the Hudson, as they were only catching four or five fish a day. At Clifton I saw a shad with the spawn running from it. On the 18th I put a quantity of spawn into a box at James J. Mulls's fishery, near Coeyman's landing, and saw evidences of life in thirty-six hours, with water at seventy-seven degrees. I had much trouble in getting spawners; they can be taken only at night. Both on the Hudson and at Holyoke my experience was the same; during the day none were to be had; from 7 p. m. to 12 p. m. we could take them in proper condition, but after 12 p. m. we could only take unripe fish. This leads me to think they deposit their spawn during the day. The steamboats were troublesome, the waves that followed them washing over my boxes and carrying away the spawn. I had to locate my boxes behind the erections put in the river to deepen the channels. Very few shad are to be found above Albany; not one will be taken, on an average, at a haul, although there are several other kinds of fish more abundant. There must be an extremely small number that run the gauntlet below successfully. After I had thoroughly examined the Hudson, I proceeded to Holyoke, and continued the artificial propagation of shad until I was stopped by the hot weather. I instituted a series of experiments which showed conclusively that while shad will hatch with water at a temperature of seventy-eight degrees, the eggs will all die when the temperature rises to eighty-two degrees.

"In the fall of this year (1868) I commenced the artificial culture of white fish. I obtained a quantity of the spawn, and submitted it to various courses of treatment. My most successful plan was to manage it as I do the ova of trout-to put it in my hatching-troughs, which are twenty-four feet long, with an inclination of three inches, and which are divided by bars across, two inches high. Gravel is laid in the compariments one and a half inch deep, so that the depth of water is only half an inch. The eggs are heavy, like those of trout, and sink instantly in water. In thirteen days the fish were visible in the egg by the aid of the microscope, and in twenty-one days they exhibited signs of life, the water standing at a temperature of forty-five degrees. They hatch

more rapidly than trout, and in those which I have with me the fish are plainly visible to the naked eye. Most of those have been kept in wet moss, in which their development has progressed, although more slowly than when in their proper element. I only stripped five or six females, and obtained some two hundred thousand eggs, as they contain about ten thousand eggs to the pound of their weight. These were placed in damp moss as soon as impregnated, and carried in a buggy over country roads seven miles, then by railroad twenty-five miles the same day. They are now doing well, and bid fair to hatch as large a percentage as could be expected with a first experiment."

The Pennsylvania Commission reports a catch of 20,000 shad within a distance of fifty miles above Columbia, as the immediate result of building the fishway at that place. The dam, which is ten feet high, was cut away to three feet at the point surmounted, and an incline of forty-five feet was constructed to overcome an elevation of three feet. Dams above, the owners of which are awaiting the adjudication of courts as to their liability for the erection of fishways, shut out these fish from three hundred miles of rivers above.

The Connecticut commissioners are co-operating with those of the States lying northward, and awaiting the erection of the fishways at Holyoke and Turner's Falls. They have issued two or three interesting reports.

The State of Massachusetts has expended, during the last year, $4,000 in the artificial hatching of shad, at Holyoke, on the Connecticut. Several thousands of salmon were hatched for the Massachusetts commis sioners, at Meredith Village, New Hampshire. Black bass have been introduced into several ponds, and spawn of the land-locked salmon has been procured for artificial hatching. The lake trout, smelt, and other useful fishes are about to be introduced.

Since the enactment of laws in New Hampshire for the protection and fostering of this interest, salmon have been hatched for the Merrimack and Connecticut rivers, the lake trout of lake Winnipiseogee have greatly increased, and black bass have been introduced into Sunapee, Massabesic, Pennacook, and Enfield lakes. Fishways have been built at Manchester, Laconia, Franklin, Sandbornton Bridge, and other places. The cost of the last years' operations was scarcely $1,500, and $4,000 placed at the disposal of the commissioners for expensive and burdensome fishways was not required, individuals promptly complying with legal requisitions.

Mr. C. G. Atkins, one of the Maine commissioners, writes that begin ings have been made in artificial propagation of shad, and land-locked salmon in Maine. At Manchester, three thousand of the latter were hatched under his direction, as a preliminary experiment, and three thousand brook trout. Another experimental establishment at Alna was conducted successfully by Mr. David C. Pottle.

Dr. W. W. Fletcher, of Concord, New Hampshire, and Rev. Livingston Stone, of Charlestown, in the same State, have been engaged successfully in obtaining ova of the salmon from New Brunswick, for propagation, under the direction of State officials.

EXPERIMENTS OF INDIVIDUALS.

Trout works at West Bloomfield, New York.-Stephen C. Ainsworth, who may be called the pioneer of pisciculture in this country, has been nine years experimenting in hatching and rearing fish, especially trout. He writes concerning his works: "The spring which I have is very small, only filling a half-inch tube; consequently my experiments have

been on a small scale as to number of trout and spawn. In the fall of 1866 I took twenty-one thousand spawn, and hatched twenty thousand ishes. Some of them died soon after they began to eat, owing to insuficient water. The remainder I put into neighboring ponds and brooks. In 1867 I took twenty-five thousand spawn, and sold all but two thousand. All hatched but fifteen; they are now (July 29, 1868,) from one and a half to four inches long, very fat, and as tame as kittens. I hatched sixty thousand one year with this one-half inch of water, but disposed of most of them soon after. I have hatched one hundred and ninety-nine out of two hundred spawn taken from a trout, but to hatch ninety to ninety-five per cent. of all spawn taken is first-rate luck; and to grow ninety per cent. of these is doing well, although I do not think I lost one per cent. of those I hatched last spring. From my experience I am satisfied that one inch of water from forty-eight to fifty-two degrees, with proper care and fixtures, will hatch a hundred thousand trout, and grow in good health sixty thousand one year.

"Four years since I put a few trout just hatched into a spring pond in this vicinity. Last suminer some were caught that weighed two pounds each. This demonstrates how rapidly they will grow in deep, cold water, with ample room, and abundant natural food.

"We have now several hundred trout ponds in this State that have been in operation from one to six years, artificially built, and stocked with this speckled tribe. From all these experiments we can safely say that the artificial propagation and cultivation of brook trout in this country is a settled and permanent fact. From these statements it is manifest that any person in possession of a spring producing a supply of water through the year of from one inch to one hundred square inches of pure water may grow, with right appurtenances and requisite knowledge and care, from six thousand to six hundred thousand trout in one year, worth, at present prices for stocking ponds and streams, a hundred dollars per thousand, or, five hundred to fifty thousand to weigh a pound each, worth one dollar per pound.

"I have grown fifteen hundred to weigh half a pound to three pounds each, with only a half-inch flow of water, though I am sorry to say that I lost about a hundred during this long, dry, heated term, and about a thousand four years ago, weighing twenty-five hundred pounds in all. With a good spring of one half-inch of water, one may raise all the trout he needs for his table, with trifling expense. A dam may be pushed across any spring brook, with a screen to prevent the fish from running over the dam; and by graveling the stream well above the pond, large numbers may be grown naturally every year."

Seth Green's trout stream and ponds.-The most noted trout-breeding enterprise is that of Seth Green, in Caledonia, Livingston County. The site of a mill stream of spring water was purchased a few years since for two thousand dollars, and ponds improvised by creating divisions in the old "forebay" and raceway. When his operations in artificial propagation had fairly commenced, he accepted a proposition for six thousand dollars for a half interest in the works. Ponds, races, hatchinghouses, and hatching-boxes were subsequently constructed, and the works extended. The profits of trout propagation, under favorable circumstances, may be seen in the reported net results of this enterprise: One thousand dollars in 1866; five thousand dollars in 1867, and ten thousand dollars in 1868.

Mr. Ainsworth, writing to this Department in July, 1868, states that Mr. Green hatched, artificially, one hundred and eighty thousand trout in 1865; three hundred thousand in 1866; six hundred thousand in 1567; that in 1868 he sold three hundred to four hundred thousand