tention on the part of the United States Fish Commission, up to date, are the sea salmon of the Atlantic, Salmo salar; the sea salmon of the western coast, S. quinnat; the land-locked salmon, a local race of the Salmo salar; the whitefish, Coregonus albus; the shad, Alosa sapidissima; the fresh-water herring, Pomolobus vernalis and æstivalis; and the German carp, Cyprinus carpio. It is intended, however, to devote more or less attention to the cultivation of the smelt, especially the very large, landlocked form found in certain waters in Maine. At no distant day it is hoped that specimens of the Oriental Gourami, a fresh-water fish with many valuable peculiarities, will be added to the list.

It is also proposed to take some measures to introduce the California brook trout to the Atlantic slope, on the ground that this fish will resist successfully a higher temperature of water than the Eastern trout; and although of no great comparative economical value, yet it will furnish to the citizens of the more southern States of the Union a pleasant sport in their capture. The instinct of mankind appears to be to catch fish under all circumstances and conditions, and the introduction of a brook trout into the warmer waters of the United States will be a very popular

move.

11.-FACILITIES AND ASSISTANCE RENDERED.

The prompt and hearty compliance with the requirement of the law of Congress, directing the various departments of the government to render such aid as might be in their power to the service of the United States Fish Commission, has been a subject of great gratification, reference to such aid being made in various portions of the present report. As already stated, the Navy Department furnished the iron steamtug Speedwell, with a full equipment of officers and crew for summer service off Salem and Halifax. As will be seen by Mr. Stone's report, at one time during the operations at the McCloud River hatchingstation, General McDowell, commanding the Department of the Pacific, furnished a detail of one officer and four men for the protection of the fishery against threatened violence. The co-operation of State fish commissions has been mentioned.

I am gratified in being able to say that there has, so far, been manifested no jealousy in regard to the United States Fish Commission, but that everything has been done to strengthen the hands of the Commissioner and to enable him to do efficient work.

Very important aid has been rendered by railroad companies in the transportation of eggs and fish to various parts of the country, there being scarcely an exception to the willingness to grant the facilities asked for in the accompanying circular. Among the earliest companies to extend this aid were the Baltimore and Ohio, the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore, and the Pennsylvania Railroad Companies. During the year 1877, similar authority was received from forty-two com

panies according to the list given in the footnote.* The special points asked for were, permission to have the cans containing the young fish transported in the baggage-cars of express trains and to allow such access of the messengers to the same as might be necessary. The provision that no charge was to be made for extra baggage was offered by the companies themselves, and gladly accepted, while an additional privilege was conferred by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company by setting the example of authorizing the stopping of trains at such points on rivers or streams as might be convenient for the proper introduction of the fish into the waters. I am very happy in being able to make public acknowledgment of this very great liberality.

* List of railroads granting facilities in 1877.

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad Company.

Atlantic and Pacific Railroad.

Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad.

Alabama Central Railroad.

Atlanta and Charlotte Air-Line Railway.

Atlantic and Great Western Railroad.

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, and Alexandria and Fredericksburg.

Central Railroad of New Jersey.

Central Vermont Railroad.

Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad.

Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.

Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company.

Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railway Company.
Connecticut River Railroad.

Denver Pacific Railway Company.

Fort Wayne, Jackson and Saginaw Railroad.

Georgia Railroad Company.

Houston and Texas Central Railway Company.

Illinois Central Railroad Company.

Kansas Pacific Railway.

Louisville and Nashville, and South and North Alabama Railroad.

Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Company.

Louisville, Cincinnati and Lexington Railroad.

Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway.

Missouri and Pacific Railway.

Northern Central Railway Company.

New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company.

Pennsylvania Railroad Company.

Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad.

Richmond and Danville Railroad Company.

Richmond and Petersburg Railroad.

Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad Company.

Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad.

Saint Louis and San Francisco Railway.

Saint Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway.

Vicksburg and Meridian Railroad.

W. C. Virginia Midland, and Great Southern Railroad Company

Western and Atlantic Railroad Company.

Wilmington and Weldon Railroad Company.

Wabash Railway.

To the express companies, too, especially the Adams and Southern companies, acknowledgments are due for waiving their privilege of controlling the extra freight on certain railroads. In one or two instances serious difficulty was experienced by agents of the express companies insisting upon the right to have the cans of the Commission delivered to them for transportation. This was done in one or two instances and resulted very disastrously in the entire destruction of the fish. Application to the president of the companies, however, secured from them instructions to their subordinates to waive all claims of the kind referred to.

Acknowledgments are also due to certain steamship companies plying between Boston, New York, and various points in Europe for assistance in transporting the messengers and the eggs of fish under their charge, free of expense. When contemplating the transmission of eggs of the California salmon and land-locked salmon and of whitefish to certain points in Europe, the agents of the French Transatlantic Steamship Company, of the Netherlands Steam Navigation Company, and of the North German Lloyds, in New York, agreed to transport the eggs sent abroad free of expense. By reference to a succeeding paragraph, in describing the history of operations connected with the attempted introduction of turbot and sole into the United States, it will be found that very important assistance was rendered by the Cunard line in giving to Mr. Mather, the agent of that transfer, a free passage for himself and fish from Liverpool to Boston. This was primarily through the instrumentality of Mr. J. G. Kidder of Boston, who was among the first to suggest the importance of this transfer and to offer his services in assisting it.

12-LEGISLATION AND PROTECTION.

A very large part of the correspondence of the Commission is connected with inquiries relating to the jurisdiction of the United States and of the States over the fishing grounds, and the methods by which all parties can secure their rights.

A very decided antagonism exists in this country, as in Europe, between professional fishermen, who prosecute their work by different methods. Attention has been called in previous reports to the Parliamentary investigation in England into the relations between line-, beam trawl-, and net fishing, as also between fishing by hand-line and trawlline, and between seines, pounds, and drift-nets. The question as to who possesses jurisdiction over the fisheries proper along the coast of the United States, and in the navigable waters is yet unsettled. At present, the United States does not exercise any, but leaves to the States the enactment of laws on the subject. Some fishermen, aggrieved by the burden of State legislation, threaten to appeal to the Supreme Court for the decision of the question; and it is much to be hoped that before long a test case may be established, so that persons interested

may know whether to appeal for protection and relief to the States or to the general Government.

The subject is still more complicated by the text of the "Washington Treaty," in regard to fisheries, by which citizens of one of the contracting powers are given the privilege of fishing on the inshores of the other; and it is not yet determined whether either party has power to pass any laws restricting the fishery rights on the shores of the other. A case has arisen where the citizens of Massachusetts were interfered with while carrying on seine-fishing on the shores of Newfoundland, and a question of damages is still under jurisdiction. Of course, so far as the setting of traps or pounds obstructs navigation it is clear that the authorities of the United States have power to remove these or to require them to be removed under severe penalties; but so far no special question has been made as to fishing where the interests of navigation are not concerned.

At the Halifax convention great complaints were made by witnesses called in behalf of the provinces, of the use, by the Americans, of trawlor long lines off their shores, these, in their opinion, tending to destroy the mother fish, while engaged in the act of spawning, and thus affect the supply. It was, however, stoutly maintained by others that these had no material influence upon the result, and that they were necessary to secure a proper harvest of the sea.

Legislation in the United States is being continually invoked for the removal of fish pounds and weirs, and in certain areas at the head of Buzzard's Bay and about Long Island protection has been granted by the State legislatures.

During the summer of 1877 an earnest appeal for the protection of the United States was received by the United States Commission from Block Island, signed by all its fishermen, and I reproduce this appeal in the Appendix to show the feeling on this subject and the general character of the objections to the trawling. Of course, having no jurisdiction in such matters, I can do no more than to publish it in the pres

I propose, in a general treatise on the plans and character of the American sea fisheries, to discuss this whole matter at length. In regard to the protection of fish and the fishing in interior waters not navigable, it is of course very evident that the States must make the necessary provisions, and if the labors looking towards the introduction of the anadromous fish are to be prosecuted successfully, arrangements must be made for the protection of the fish, securing to them during certain periods free access to the headwaters of the streams and their return therefrom, as well as the establishment of a close time each week during the run, and the absolute cessation of fishing after a certain period. These very reasonable requirements are urged to protect the interest and rights of the many against the greed and senseless rapacity of the few.

The methods necessary for securing the upward run of the fish are

the removal of all unnecessary obstructions, the establishment of fishways or fish-ladders over such natural or artificial dams as cannot otherwise be ascended.

It is, however, not less necessary to provide for the return of the young fish to the sea. The most serious obstacle to this is found in the arrangements known as "fish-baskets," intended more particularly for the capture of eels descending the streams in autumn, but taking at the same time immense quantities of shad, alewives, and other valuable fish, including the salmon. This arrangement consists in the establishment of two walls of stone blocks or pebbles, laid up in the form of the letter V, the apex tending down the stream. At the apex is placed what is called a basket, which consists of a box in several compartments, each with a bottom of slats set obliquely. The descending fish that happen to be intercepted in the upper end of the V are carried down and poured into the slatted boxes. The large fish are retained, while some of the smallest pass through the openings. Shad, however, are so extremely delicate that the slightest blow or shock will kill them, and the baskets are sometimes filled with bushels of young shad not more than a few inches in length.

It is useless to undertake to stock rivers with shad or herring in which this objectionable practice is maintained. Fortunately, it is practicable only in waters shallow enough to permit putting up the side walls of stone; but, unfortunately, the Susquehanna, which was at one time one of the finest shad-streams in the United States, is particularly noted for the establishment of fish-baskets, owing to the succession of shallow places in the river traversed with rocky ledges, and having an ample supply of bowlders, furnishing material for the walls. It is quite safe to say that, more than anything else, it is to the presence of these fishbaskets in large numbers that the decrease and approximate extermination of shad in the Susquehanna is due, and that no efforts on the part of the States of Maryland and Virginia for the restoration of shad and herring will be of any avail unless accompanied by most stringent measures for destroying these obstructions.

Another very important subject, to which the attention of the proper authorities should be called, is the enormous drain upon the possible increase of the striped bass or rock-fish by the sale of the young in the markets. This fish, of which individuals weighing fifty to seventy pounds have formerly been seen in the market of Washington, is now rapidly being reduced in number and size, and by no cause, probably, so much as by the capture and sale of fish from six to twelve inches in length. It is more than probable that, if undisturbed, more than half the fish of this size would reach weight of twenty pounds or more; and no more judicious measure could be enacted than that of imposing a heavy penalty upon any dealer for having in his possession, or offering for sale, striped bass of less than fifteen inches in length, or weighing less than from one to two pounds. Of course the capture by individuals of fish below the