The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1879-07-10

from four to SIX days, more or less, ac'
cording to the temperature of the water
the young fish burst from their shell:
and appear in the waters almost imper.
ceptibly small but very lively; their eyes
and the little bag of food on their backs
being the most noticeable parts of them
They grow pretty rapidly, and in abou
ten days are ready to be shipped. Those
which are to be sent off are then placed
in fresh water in large milk cans, and are
transported to their destination under the
care of experts, whose duty it is to strain
off the water and replace it by fresh al
certain intervals until they reach theil
place of destination, where they are i'm.
mediately emptied into the stream and
left to care for themselves.
DETAILS OF THE BUSINESS.
Since 1871 over forty-eight million Of
shad eggs have been hatched and the
shad distributed to different rivers all
over the country by the United States
Fish Commission. They have been sent
to California; the Western and Eastern
rivers have been stocked and the tributa.
ries of the Mississippi have also received
large supplies. In fact, the United States
Fish Commission. under the management
of Professor Baird and his assistants, has
supplied the young shad to the amount
of nearly 5O,O00,000 of California sal
mon to the amount of over l6, ,OOO, 900, OF
Maine salmon to amount of nearly ,0OO,-
900, and of lake white6sh to the amount
of 100000, to different States of the
Union, the demand coming from almost
every State, including such interior States
even as Colorado, Arkansas, Illinois,
Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Mississippi,
and even Utah Territory.
EFFORT TO RETARD HATCHING.
This year Mr.. Ferguson has begun at
this place an attempt to retard the hatch
ing of shad eggs by the careful use of
eggs instead of the young fish. There is
q great demand from European govern
ments, mainly from the German States,
for American fish. 1t is difficult
and costly and also risky to transport the
young shad for so long distance, because
experience has shown that the water
which they get on the way does not con-
tain a proper supply of food for them;
They can be shipped for a journey of
seven or eight days without much diff
Guilty or loss, but if the journey is pro-
tracted for ten days or longer great num-
bers of them die on the way, and they
are supposed to die of starvation. Ifthe
plans now undergoing trial for retarding
the Matching of eggs by the use of cold
should prove successful it will be possible
to ship shad eggs to much longer dis
tances and without risk of loss.
THE ROCK OR STRIPED BASS.
Professor Baird has been anxious for
some years to obtain the eggs of the rock
FISH for Matching. This is the fish known
on the New England coast as the strip.
ed bass" Its spawning ground has been
looked for five years, and IN vain until
this year, when, near the close of the
shad-hatching operations in Albemarle
Sound, Mr.. Ferguson was so fortunate as
10 take from the seine of q shore fisher
man three ripe rockfsh. Each of these
fish contained not less than 200, 900 eggs.
AS their habits were not known, some
loss was experienced in spite of great
care. It was found that where the shad
egg requires six days to hatch, the eggs
Of the rock or striped bass hatched out
in the same temperature in from twenty
four to thirty six hours. The eggs are
third smaller than those of the shad,
much lighter, aud more disposed to float.
This made it necessary to reverse the mo-
ton of the bucket so as to keep the eggs
down instead of keeping them in suspen-
sion, as is done with the shad eggs. The
young striped bass when they were
hatched out were so much smaller than
the young shad that they escaped from
the buckets in considerable numbers
Enough were saved, however, 'to show
that they are hardy and can be trans
ported to even q greater distance than
had. 1t is believed that the striped bass,
does not spawn north of Chesapeake Bay,
and where this noble fish is found on the
New England coast it is migratory. Pro-
fessor Baird says that no ripe rockhsh
has ever been found there. Its time of
comes probably in the waters
Of .Albemarle Sound toward the close of
the sbad season, and is thus convenient
for the Fish Commissions operations
there.
The industrial importance of this dis
covery of the place where the striped
bass spawns is very great, because this
fish is in season, wherever it is caught,
during at least ten months in the year,
and is favorite fish in the market at all
times. If it can be made more abundant
by the operations of the Fish Commits
sion it will therefore supply employment
to fishermen and food for the markets
during a great part of the year, whereas
the shad season is very short, employs
the fishermen during but few weeks in
in the year, and during that time the
market is often so glutted that the fish
are sold at very low prices. They brought
this year at this station no more than Sc
or 81 per 100. Even now it is believed
by experts that, large as is the product
of the shad fisheries on this coast, the
total value of the rock or striped bass
product nearly equals that of the shad.
EXPERIMENTS WITH HERRING.
During the last season, in Albemarle
Sound, Professor Baird and Mr.. Fergu-
son experimental with the eggs of her
ring. They hatched out four or FIVE hun
dred thousand eggs, and with such COM
plete success that they established the
fact that the herring can be artifcially
Matched in quantities for restocking
rivers, whenever it shall become necessa-
ry, with perfect ease. The herring eggs
are much smaller than those OF the shad,
but are treated in the Matching operation
very much as shad eggs. During the
last three years Mr.. Ferguson, acting for
the U. S. Fish Commission and the State
of Maryland, has thus added the striped
bass and the herring to the number of
fish which can be successfully hatched
by artificial means for the restocking of
rivers, and also the smelt, of which he
hatched out half g million on the Rari-
tan River, near New Brunswick, N. j.,
and scattered the young fish in Maryland
waters. For all this his ingenious appa-
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