State." But, next to the shad, the salmon has received the greatest share of attention, and millions of the eggs of the Pacific and the Atlantic salmon have been placed in the principal rivers and their tributaries, and as this is the year when, according to calculation, a portion of these should reach maturity, the result is looked for with special interest. Not a few have been already taken in the parr and smolt condition, and there are reports of others having been taken which had attained the respective weights of eleven, fourteen, and eighteen pounds.

The efforts of the Commissioners to secure ova of the Schoodic, or land-locked salmon from Maine, was attended with marked success. During the years 1875, 1876, and 1877, 3,614,000 were taken by Mr. Atkins, the Maine Commissioner, at Grand Lake Stream in that State. Connecticut's proportion was about one-eighth, which have been placed in such waters as were deemed best adapted to their cultivation and growth. Of the Atlantic salmon, 20,000 fry were placed in the head-waters of the Connecticut in 1867, and four years after, 1871, 2,000 salmon ova from the Miramichi in New Brunswick, were hatched, giving 1876 fry, and these were sent to the tributaries of Broad Brook, a branch of the Quinnebaug. To these were added 6,000 more fry obtained from Mr. Wilmot, Fish Commissioner of Canada, and put in the Housatonic, Farmington, Shetucket, and Quinnebaug rivers, above and below the dams. It was now resolved by the Commissioners to obtain their supplies of spawn hereafter from the Penobscot, and having succeeded, about 25,000 fry were distributed in 1872. That year, the number of salmon ova from the Penobscot hatched was 1,500,000, at a cost of $5 per thousand. Connecticut's portion of this supply was 260,000, the balance being divided between Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, which had co-operated in the work and borne their share of the expense. In 1873, Connecticut received 244,000; in 1874, 472,000, the cost being $2.75 per thousand; in 1875, 310,000, at $2 per thousand. In addition to these, the State received, the same year, 480,000 California salmon eggs from Professor Baird, 460,000 of which were hatched. From 500,000 eggs received from California in 1876, 477,286 fry were obtained, and these, with the product of the previous years, made an aggregate of about 2,500,000, from which it is reasonable to look for a good report within a very few years. About a dozen fish have already been taken in the Connecticut during the past year weighing from nine to eighteen pounds, so that our anglers may not hereafter have to make long and tedions trips to Canadian rivers to enjoy their summer's fly-fishing. If the expectations which we have a right to entertain are realized, we shall have our piscatorial recreations much nearer home. In addition to the salmon fry placed in the river by the Connecticut Commissioners, its head waters have received nearly half a million, contributed by the commissioners of Vermont and New Hampshire according to previous arrangement. To secure the result of their operations, the Commissioners, Messrs. Wm. M. Hudson, Robert G. Pike, and James A. Bill, recommend that the taking of salmon previous to July, 1880, shall be prohibited.

FARM FISH CULTURE.

Mr. D. D. T. Moore, for many years the editor, as well as the fou nder, of Moore's Rural New Yorker, at present one of the editors of the New York World, advises, in the following article, fish culture on the part of farmers in ponds or other suitable places on the farm. The Ohio State Fish Commission will, to the extent of its ability, second every effort on the part of farmers to grow fish on their farms. The day, perhaps, is not very

far distant when the farmers will be obliged to rely upon their own fish ponds for any fresh fish or pan fish they may desire, that the government may take charge of the streams and lease them for fishing purposes as is done in many European countries, and as Ohio leased her canals for transportation purposes.

"Fish culture has become a profitable employment and branch of business in many sections of the country, and may be made such in many others. In numerous localities, where little or no attention has been given to the matter, there are facilities for rendering fish culture both pleasant and profitable. Every farmer who has a small pond or lake on his farm, or a never-failing spring so situated that by damming up the gully or hollow below it a pond can be formed, may make an acre or two thus located the most profitable part of his premises by stocking the water with fish. This can now be done with little expense in this and other States where there are fish commissioners, as they furnish the spawn of choice varieties on application, with requisite directions and information. By giving the matter attention at the proper season thousands of our readers may easily inaugurate upon their farms a branch of industry which will not only prove a source of substantial income, but from which much pleasure may also be derived by themselves and their friends. The profits which have been and are being realized from comparatively small ponds and streams of trout in various parts of this State, and notably on Long Island, demonstrate that the business, properly conducted, must be lucrative in favorable situations.

"Pisciculture is a natural branch of agriculture, and may be pursued to advantage by many farmers who never gave a serious thought to the subject or figured upon the income that might be derived from stocking the lakes, ponds, or rivulets upon their prenises with suitable fish. The relative fertility of the water and the land is altogether in favor of the water,' said Mr. Robert B. Roosevelt, of this city, now President of the American Fish Culturists' Association, in a speech in Congress some years ago; and he added: 'An acre of land will produce corn enough to support a human being, but an acre of water will support several persons, and could readily be made, with proper aid, to sustain the lives of many more. The former requires manuring, working, planting, and harvesting; the latter merely requires harvesting, and that where the fish are sufficiently abundant is hardly a labor at all. While the yield from the land is reasonably large the profit is exceedingly small. The fields must be plowed, and harrowed, and fertilized; the corn must be planted; it must be plowed again, and still again must be hoed; and at last the ears must be stripped, husked, and ground. What is the net result of this, compared with the natural increase of fish grown in abundance, almost without effort, finding their own food, and finally taken in some net which does its fishing while its owner is sleeping.'

"In the same speech Mr. Roosevelt, after speaking of the great advantages of the United States over other countries for fish culture-its vast lakes, enormous rivers, innumerable streams, brooks, ponds, bays, lagoons, creeks, and rivulets not being equaled in any other quarter of the globe-said: 'But more important than all this is the character of our fish, for we have the finest fish in the world for artificial cultivation, the most prolific, the easiest managed, and the most remunerative.' And the speaker concluded with these truthful and eloquent sentences: 'What was done with the common tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and hundreds of other vegetable productions which, as wild, were worthless, may in a higher degree be carried into effect with fish. Wild rice

scarcely produces seed to continue the supply; but protected, developed, encouraged, it feeds a tenth part of the world. Fish, neglected, destroyed, poached, and wasted can soon be annihilated. Their reproductive power can only maintain a certain equilibrium; incline that toward destruction, and the entire class will quickly disappear. Treat them like wild animals and they will inevitably be exterminated; domesticate them, as it were, encourage their growth by putting them under healthful influences, protect them from unreasonable disturbance, let them breed in peace, guard the young from in jury, assist them by artificial aid, select the best varieties for appropriate waters, and we will soon augment the supply as greatly as we do with either land animals or vegetables.'

"But our few words are becoming many. Our purpose was simply to call the attention of those favorably situated for its adoption to the feasibility and advantage of fish culture on the farm. Of course, those who enter into it should do so prudently, first ascertaining whether they possess proper facilities, including the right kind of water and sufficient information to prosecute the enterprise with a reasonable prospect of success. In many instances the business can be commenced at a trifling ontlay of money, but to insure success care must be exercised in the details of stocking, propagation, and management. In fact, though comparatively easy when understood, fish culture requires knowledge and care to prevent failure, as has been proven by the experience of many who have met with losses and disappointment from lack of proper information and attention."

So far as hatching is concerned, the Ciark patent employed by this Commission is very satisfactory, although somewhat expensive. Several new processes have since been invented and patented; among these is a process which requires deep glass jars or vases, of the capacity of several gallons. These vases are filled with eggs and a jet of water from above, introduced through a tube at the bottom, keeps the eggs in motion, and it is claimed that the current keeps the dead eggs on the surface, so that they can readily be removed. This vase process has one advantage, to say the least, and that is that the dead eggs may be removed without handling or disturbing the sound ones. It is claimed by some that the frequent handling of the eggs destroys a great many of them. The Clark process renders it imperative that all the eggs be examined two or three times at least every week, and as every examination necessitates taking the trays containing the eggs out of the water, and then placing in the examining trough, then taking them out of the water again and replacing them in the hatching-boxes, causes two exposures to the atmosphere. These exposures necessarily are sudden, and, as the atmos phere is of a much higher temperature than the water, the sudden changes of temperature may affect the eggs very unfavorably. Experiments made by Mr. Carpenter, of Kelley's Island, indicate very clearly that the less the eggs are handled the less dead eggs are found.

Any device which will enable the attendants to remove the dead eggs

without handling the vitalized ones will certainly be the accomplishment of a great desideratum.

At the meeting of the American Fish Culturists' Association recently, Professor Milner gave an account of the process of hatching shad eggs by machinery, in operation at Havre de Grace, Maryland, where over eight millions shad were hatched last year. The eggs to be hatched are placed in sheet-iron cylinders, with wire netting bottoms, and half submerged in the river. The cylinders are suspended from the short arms. of levers, and given a slow up and down movement by means of shafting carrying eccentrics acting on the long arms of the levers; the whole set in motion by a ten-horse power steam engine. The engine and other machinery are carried by a large scow, anchored in the stream. The fish so hatched proved hardy, bearing transportation well, even as far as California. The idea of placing the eggs in a proper receptacle and subjecting to a gentle elevating, and then depressing motion while being submerged, has long been maintained by Mr. Carpenter, of Kelley's Island, but instead of a steam engine Mr. Carpenter proposed a species of clock work which might be wound up, and having either weights or springs as motive power, which would be much simpler and less expensive than the engine; beside dispensing with fuel, engineer, and fireman. There is no doubt that by the practice of stretching seines across the mouths of streams which empty into the Ohio, many indigenous. fishes are prevented from ascending the smaller streams for the purpose of spawning, and thus the streams become depopulated. Whilst it is exceedingly doubtful whether there are any indigenous truly migratory fishes in Ohio waters, it is nevertheless true that in the tall the larger fish seek deep water in which to pass the winter, and in spring time seek shallow water in which to deposit the spawn-notwithstanding the fact that at any time during the year the smaller or non-spawning fish, of the same species, may be found in the same locality.

But all the exotic fishes, such as the shad, California salmon, etc., are truly migratory fishes, and of the many thousands planted in streams in the interior of the State, none can return, if the practice of stretching. seines across the mouths of streams is continued. According to the decision of the Supreme Court of Ohio, referred to in Governor Young's message, under the head of FISH CULTURE, no laws enacted by, the Ohio Legislature can be enforced beyond low water mark on the Ohio side of the Ohio River.

The only remedy which suggests itself to the commissioners, is, that the Legislatures of Ohio, Virginia, and Kentucky respectively, appoint commissioners to fix the boundary line of the State of Ohio along the

middle of the navigable channel of the Ohio. As this boundary line may be of greater importance in the future than it has in the past, it may not be impertinent to state a few historical facts in relation to it. Previous to 1783 Virginia never laid any claim to the Ohio River-or, in fact, to any territory west of the Alleghenies, because, "this region was originally a part of the vast district claimed by the French, and known as Louisiana. The Mississippi River was discovered by French missionaries, and was subsequently explored to its mouth by LaSalle, who, according to the custom of the nations of that day, took possession in the name of his sovereign, Louis XIV, of the vast region drained by its waters. After the French war, France, by the treaty of peace of 1763, ceded to Great Britain all her possessions east of the Mississippi River. When the war of the American Revolution broke out, the whole of the eastern part of the great Mississippi valley was claimed by Great Britain, and by the treaty of 1783 between that power and the United States this region was relinquished to our nation. It is true that various States of the Union laid claim during the Revolutionary war to large tracts west of the Alleghenies on the ground of old English charters, but their claims were conflicting, and it was the policy of Congress not to decide between them. Eventually all these States made cessions of their claims, some with and some without reservations; but the probabilities are that the nation as a whole, which had really wrested the lands from Great Britain, was by the laws of nations the rightful owner of the region. These lands thus came from the French to the English by the treaty of 1763, and from the English to the United States by the treaty of 1783." According to the above, none of the States laid any claim to territory between the Alleghenies and the Ohio River, for, "in June, 1783, the officers of the army, to the number of 2,883 petitioned Congress that the lands to which they were entitled might be located in 'that tract of country bounded north on Lake Erie, east on Pennsylvania, south-east and south on the river Ohio, west on a line beginning at that part of the Ohio which lies twenty-four miles west of the mouth. of the river Scioto, thence running north on a meridian line till it intersects the river Miami, which falls into Lake Erie, thence down the middle of that river to the Lake.' They speak of this tract as 'of sufficient extent, the land of such quality and situation, as may induce Congress to assign and mark it out as a tract or territory suitable to form a distinct government (or colony of the United States), in time to be admitted one of the Confederate States of America;' and also as 'a tract of country not claimed as the property of, or within the jurisdiction of, any particular State of the Union."" Special stress is placed upon the clos