Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1868-10-28
Fish Culture.

The Legislation of the several New Eng
land States preliminary and necessary to
the Restocking of the streams of that region,
with the fish which internal improvements
and indiscriminate and unlawful fishing have
united to drive away, is now in accord and
complete. Massachusetts, New Hampshire
and Connecticut have, by uniformity of new
| laws passed last year and this. regulated
I fishing in the Connecticut, Merrimack,
Mystic, Pemigewasset, Ammonoosuck. VIM
nipisiOgee, Baker 8, and other rivers which
. flow through those States. Maine has also
taken action in regard to the Kennehec and
her other streams. The right to take shad
from the streams of the New England States
| is annulled for the next FIVE years the erec-
tion or maintenance Of any dam or weir
without providing a suitable fshway by
which the fish can surmount the obstruction,
and the setting and drawing of any net or
seine, is prohibited, and is to be severely
punished. The more material work of re-
pairing the injuries done to the inland fishe-
ries by the building of fshways in those
States is already far advanced, several lad
ders already been finished and many more
are now in course of construction. The not
less important work of Restocking the
streams by depositing artifcially OBJ
tained, and fish artifcially bred. has already
been extensively carried out in the same
States. Charles q. Atkins. one of the
Maine Commissioners, turned loose forty
thousand young shad in the kennebec in
May last DR.. Fletcher and j. S. Robinson,
of New Hampshire, have deposited two hun
dred and fifty thousand salmon and one hun
dred thousand trout in the Merrimack in the
last two years, and Seth Green placed forty
million of young shad in the Connecticut
last June. New England is, therefore, al
ready well advanced to that former happy
condition, when by her laws she prohibited
masters from surfeiting their apprentices on
trout, and when the natural yield of each
stream was an hundred fold greater than at
present. The annual take of shad in all the
rivers of the State of Connecticut is estimated
at the present time at 62S 500 and it falls in
some years low as one-ffth of this aver
age. Thirty-two years ago the take in the
Merrimack alone, from Lowell to the sea.
was 365 900 and then there not the in
centive to fishermen of the present high
prices. To the last condition Of plenty the
rivers of New England are expected to re-
turn, through the present wisely directed
and energetic efforts of the Fish Com
missloners.
The importance of the work can hardly be
over-estimated, vet it is not generally ap-
preciated, probably because it is not under
stood. The same knowledge. and far less
labor and money, which is required to make
a sowing of corn will make a larger sowing
of fish, and less attention and care will pro-
duce from the piscatorial crop as valuable a
harvest as from the cereal. 4" An acre of
good water says Seth Green. a practical
water farmer of many years experience, " can
be made to produce twice much food as an
acre of land Hon. stephen III. Ainsworth
fishermen of as enlarged an experience as
Mr.: Green. has shown that an expenditure
,f Cl- lgl in hat will ~
conducted with skill and economy, Il clear
profit in four years Of S42l $50 Messrs.
Theodore Lyman and Alfred r. Field, the
Fish Commissioners of Massachusetts. and
the most energetic and practical ones in the
New England h"ld, show by their calcula-
tions, based actual experiments, that
with the fishways built and the fishing reg
ulated by law, the artificial breeding OF shad
will result in producing 1000 tull-grown
fish where only one is now produced natural
ly. In 1868, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales a
territory about the size of New England
furnished to the London market alone g.
7l2, ,0l6 pounds of salmon. The fishing rem
tai of the river Fay in 1852 was less than
$40 900; in 1864. it had advanced to S75.-
600 in gold, and the stream yielded 20 900
salmon annually, which, at seven pounds
each, would weigh 400 900 pounds. and sell
here at 40 cents per pound, producing $l95.-
600, without in the slightest degree decreas-
ing the supply for the next senson, or re-
quiring another planting of fish, The
Massachusetts Commissioners say. in their
report, that the return from every stream in
the country ought to, and, after the compile
tion of the improvements now going on, will
be at least two hundred times greater than
at present. Thirty years ago no fresh sal
mon were brought to our markets from the
British Provinces, simply because our own
rivers were full of them, while the Canadians
had already exhausted the tributaries of the
St. Lawrence. At that time, when the Ca
madam rivers were literally exhausted, the
Hudson, Oswego, Genesee, Susquehanna,
Delaware, Connecticut and all our north
eastern rivers were so full of fish, that nc
cording to a writer in Rarper's Mdqaeine,
for November, 1868, =. twelve and fifteen
pound salmon sold for shilling each and .
- they could be taken in any of our rivers by I
the hundred an evening with a single spear
Now the boot is on the other leg. We have |
shut out the fish by high dams and murder
Gus nets and weirs, while the Canadians
have re-stocked their streams and are selling
their salmon in the New England and New
York markets at preposterous prices. Eng
land and France have in the same way res |
tored their inland fisheries The writer in |
Harpers states that in 1859 the oyster sup
ply of France was exhausted. and that 's the .
largest farmer on the island of Re during |
that year, raised and sold only $50 worth Of
a bivalve of which Paris now daily consumes
900 ,O0O." In the French official report of /
this industry for the year 1862, three years
after the establishment of the system of arti-
fetal culture, the revenue of these oyster
farms on this single island is put down at
1925, ,52l, an increase of over 1900 per
cent! According to an English authority |
the revenue of the same farms in 1864 |
to $780, ,000 We have been
boasting in this country for years of the
with which we employed our i'm
mensc water power, never suspecting for |
moment that in the unnecessarily careless
and unsystematic and vagrant use of that |
element we were destroying our industry |
and source of wealth of equal and greater |
value and Importance.
1t is generally conceded by the most prac-
tical fish culturists that here. as in Europe |
and the Canadas, the remedy lies in the arti-
fetal breeding and protecting of the fish which |
it is most desirable to have on our tables,
such as the trout, shad and salmon. For the
information and instruction of all those desir-
ing to engage in it, numerous works have
lately been published and announced. DR..
PEARD's Wafer Farming is a valuable and not
to voluminous handbook on the subject.
HARPER & BRorHERs, New York, announce as
American Fishes and Fishing, on
the same subject embracing also the natural
history of the principal fish, by GENIo G.
Scorrs recognized authority on all branches
of ichthyology In an illustrated paper on
g Fish Culture in America, - in the last num-
Der of Hayyer's Magazine, the history of the
art is fully related and the best systems of
artificial culture are described and illustrated.
Ehe various agricultural and sporting papers