APPENDIX.

REPORT OF FISH COMMISSIONERS.

To his Excelllency,

HON. PETER T. WASHBURN :

The Commissioners of River Fisheries made no report last year, for the reason that we had little to report further than that we had attended some of the meetings called by the Secretary of the New England Commissioners, and had learned that an increased interest was being felt in relation to the restocking of the streams of New England with salmon and other migratory fish. In each of the New England States Commissioners have been appointed, and active measures are being taken to have the streams restocked. New York, Pennsylvania, and Canada are also awake to the importance of this subject, commissioners are appointed and are at work. Massachusetts has already appropriated over $30,000 to defray the expense of introducing migratory fish into her rivers and building fishways, that they may go from the sea to the head waters of the rivers to deposit their spawn.

It is the instinctive trait of migratory fish, like the salmon, to return to their native stream to deposit their spawn, and it is upon this peculi-arity that the fish commissioners of the several states found their hopes of success in this enterprise.

Instinct teaches the trout and salmón that they must not make their spawning beds in the sea, in brackish water, or even in the large streams that are liable to be flooded with muddy water, for in none of these conditions will spawn mature and the species be perpetuated, but the clear cold water of our mountain brooks is just what is needed. To these points salmon will go, unless unsurmountable obstacles intervene. These obstacles now exist, and it is only by removing them or building fishways over them, that we can hope for success. This will require funds, and should floods come, like those that recently swept down our mountain streams, it is likely that many of the fishways would be swept away. In order to have the experiments become a success, these fishways must be kept up, especially during the high water in the spring and fall. It would, therefore, not only require funds sufficient to build the fishways at first, but funds must be accessible at all times to make any repairs needed. We are of opinion that it would pay Vermont to make appropriations sufficient to build and maintain fishways in all the principal streams of the state; but while the finances of the state are encumbered with a heavy debt and with the heavy tax that must be raised in many towns to repair the damages made by the late freshets, it

is not reasonable to suppose that the Legislature would appropriate the requisite sum at the present session.

In view, therefore, of this state of things, and in order to secure to our state the great boon of a return of migratory fish to its waters, we propose, that the introduction of sea fish, and the building and maintenance of fishways be entrusted to private enterprise. We believe there are men of means in the state who will make a contribution toward carrying out the experiment. We speak of this as an experiment. It is one, but in other countries it has been tried, apparently under no more favorable circumstances than those afforded in our streams, and the results have been highly successful. Still, in our case, we may be doomed to disappointment and failure. We have already met with reverses that we did not anticipate when we embarked in the enterprise. We have learned that the young salmon is a very tender and inoffensiye fish, unable to successfuly cope with other fish of equal size. It pained us last summer when we put some young salmon into a tributary of the Winooski river, which we supposed safe from the attacks of destructive fish, to see little minnows and dace, scarcely larger than the young salmon, come out from their hiding places and murderously attack the young fry that we had but a few moments before placed there. Minnows, no longer than the young salmon, would attack the new comers, and in one instance we captured one about two inches long, in which we found four young salmon. This taught us an important lesson, and one that must be observed by those who would succeed in salmon raising, viz: the salmon must be reared, as they are at the fish establishment at Stormontfield, in Scotland, for the Scottish rivers, in ponds by themselves till they are about ready to make their first trip to the ocean. Then a fishway should be made over every dam more than eight feet high, and even those of less height, provided the water falls upon an apron or in any way that does not afford an eddy immediately below the dam.

In order to induce men of means to embark in this enterprise of restocking the streams of the state, there must be an inducement held We must not expect men to invest their money without some hope of recompense.

out.

Philanthropists sometimes bequeath a portion of their estate for the upbuilding of a school, or to help sustain some literary or benevolent institution; but these things are not untried experiments in our country like the one of restocking our streams, as we hope to furnish food for the hungry millions that are to follow us. We fully believe the enterprise to be one of the most philanthropic of any now being discussed by the people of New England. If successful, it will not only furnish additional food for the people of New England, but it will furnish just the kind of food that we need for our health and for the perpetuity of our people. Contrast the physical developments of the people of Vermont, whose ancestors were noted for their size and hardihood, with the fish-eating people of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and we can but observe the great difference. Our children are becoming dwarfed in size, frail in structure, and for one to reach the age of thirty without having decayed teeth, is an exception, and not the general rule, unless perchance he makes it a rule to eat fish every Friday. If this rule was more strenuously observed, we are of opinion that a greater number would be saved from decayed teeth. Now it is a well known fact that the teeth first to rot are those upon which there is but a slight coating of enamel, or one from which the enamel has been removed by being broken. This enamel is composed mainly of the phosphate of lime.

The elementary substances forming our teeth are taken into our stomachs, and by the wonderful chemical processes carried on in our systems, these elements are formed into compounds-into teeth, bones and muscle. But if the proper elementary substances are not brought into this laboratory, we must not expect perfect compounds to result, for nature does not follow the dream of the alchemist, and hope to bring something out of nothing, or to produce compounds wholly unlike the elementary atoms of which they are composed.

We are of opinion that the reason why so many people in New England have an imperfect enamel upon their teeth, and why so many are troubled with a softening, or losing vitality of their bones, is because they do not eat sufficiently of the food that contains the elements necessary to promote their proper development and strength. In order that the bones be strong, and the enaniel be perfect, phosphorus and lime must be taken into the stomach and ultimately be compounded in proper proportions.

We lack the important element of phosphorus in much of our food, as is proved by the scarcity of it in our system. If we had as much of it as the fish-eaters of Nova Scotia, we should not need tooth powders to make our teeth white, nor should we furnish so much work for dentists. But we need not go abroad to find proof to sustain this theory. The sailor and those who subsist mainly on sea fish along our coasts, and even the conscientious Catholics who eat fish on Friday, generally have sounder teeth than the persons who live inland and rarely eat fish from the sea. We think of no food that furnishes so much phosphorus as the fish from the salt water. The ocean seems to be the great repository of this important element. It abounds in such quantity as to occasionally show itself upon the water, and the prow of a boat at times, as it rushes through the water, looks as though it were ploughing through liquid fire. Fish absorb large quantities of this, and oftentimes, as they are piled up and being prepared for market, they emit a phosphorescent light in the dark, almost as bright as coals of fire. Therefore, in our opinion, it is important that we eat more sea fish. We hope to be instrumental in bringing back to our streams the salmon that were so abundant in the days of the early settlement of our state. But we despair of having the state do the work. The next best thing that we can hope to do, is to have the grand result consummated through private munificence. We must solicit the aid of individuals. For the money which they invest, which, at best, cannot be returned to them for years, even with the very best of success, they must have the hope of a reward, besides the consciousness of having done a good thing for posterity. They must have special rights granted to them. In order to do this, we can conceive no better plan than for the Legislature to grant to such Association the exclusive right of taking salmon and other sea fish for a term of years. We think twenty-five years as short a period as capitalists or others will accept; but if this time is granted we think men will be induced to venture in the experiment. At the end of that time, if the work is suffered to go on, the question will probably be settled whether the project is feasible or not. In any event it will cost the state nothing, nor will any mill-owner suffer in consequence of the experiment. If it succeeds, the rivers will be restocked and fishways will be built over the dams, and the projectors of the scheme will be justly classed among the benefactors of their race; but in case it should turn out that our streams cannot again be restocked, the only loss will then fall upon those who contributed to make the experiment, for the streams

and the fish in them will be no worse off than at present. If fishways are built so that trout can go from the mouth to the source of the rivers of the State, it will have the effect to greatly increase their numbers, for they, like the salmon, seek the head waters of rivers in which to make their spawning beds, and unless they can find such a place their ova are generally spoiled by muddy water, or the young fry are gobbled up by other fish as soon as they are hatched.

We would ask for stringent laws to protect the sea fish belonging to this Association, but we would not ask to have any one's rights that they now enjoy abridged, nor would we have any special fishing rights guaranteed to members of the Association, further than to catch the fish which they have helped to introduce into the rivers of the state. They, as well as others, should be deprived the right to catch trout or other fish during the season prohibited by law, and others as well as members of the Association should have the right to fish in all the streams of the State except when prohibited by law, and have the right to take all kinds of fish except those introduced by the Association. Members of the Association, or those authorized by them, should have the exclusive right to fish for sea fish that they have introduced.

We hope that the citizens of the State will unite and raise the funds requisite to carry out the plan contemplated in this report. Unless something of this kind is done, our rivers will remain as barren of fish as they are at present. It is nearly or quite twenty-five years since this question was first agitated in this State. Legislative aid was invoked, but nothing was done toward testing the experiment. Had private contributions and suitable experiments followed the able report submitted, some years since, by Hon. George P. Marsh, it is likely that our rivers to-day would have been stocked with salmon. But reports and legislative resolutions alone do not accomplish the object desired. There must be money and labor expended. With the arrangement contemplated we can see no objection. None will be taxed against their will; and every citizen of the State who desires may help to produce a fund to try the experiment, and if successful will be entitled to a portion of the benefits conferred. During the past year we have purchased over twenty-five hundred young salmon for the streams of the state. We thought best to place them in two streams, West River and the Winooski, as we considered these good salmon streams, with less dams and impassable falls than in other streams of the state. We put them in with the hope that some measure would be taken this fall to have fishways built.

As before remarked in this report, most of those intended to stock the Winooski were eaten by other fish, and we fear that many of those placed in a small stream in Weston, by DR. M. C. EDMUNDS, for West River, have met with a similar fate. The flood that suddenly made great streams of little brooks, would of course overleap all barriers made to confine the young fry and suffer them to escape to larger streams, where there would be plenty of larger fish in waiting ready to eat the young salmon. Unless fishways are built, those fish that escaped the many dangers that surrounded them, will never again return to the state. It will be impossible for them to so do.

It was the impassable dams built across the Connecticut river that cut off the great supply of salmon that formerly thronged the Connecticut and its tributaries. Two dams on the Connecticut at present are so high as to be impassable for shad and salmon, one at Holyoke and one Turner's Falls. The corporation owning the latter are compelled by their charter to build and maintain a fishway over it, and the State of

at

Massachusetts has already appropriated $12,000 to build one over the dam at Holyoke. The unsafe condition of the dam at Holyoke, induced the commissioners to postpone their labors on it till the dam was made A large corps of men have been employed during the past summer in making the repairs, and we understand that the dam is now considered safe, and the work upon the fishway will be commenced at an early day next spring.

more secure.

We venture to submit a bill with this report, and have taken the liberty, without leave of the parties in some instances, to insert as corporators the names of men in every county in the State with the hope that they will either act in the matter, or induce others to do so.

For the time expended and money paid for expenses during the past two years, in attending meetings of commissioners for other states, and for placing the young salmon in the streams, &c., we make no charge, and only wish our efforts had been more successful.

ALBERT D. HAGER,

CHARLES BARRETT, Commissioners.

MONTPELIER, VT., Oct. 25th, 1869.

AN ACT TO INCORPORATE THE VERMONT SALMON BREEDING ASSOCIATION.

It is hereby enacted by the General Assembly in the State of Vermont :

SEC. 1. Charles Barrett, Andrew A. Sweet, M. C. Edmunds, O. S. Bliss, Roswell Farnham, James Hutchinson, Jr., Hiel Hollister, Henry Clark, Jonathan Ross, David Hibbard, Hiram A. Cutting, Henry A. Burt, Dugald Stewart, J. D. Bridgman, Robert F. Gowing, Charles Dewey, H. G. Wood, Giles Harrington, N. P. Bowman, D. M. Camp, H. H. Powers, Albert D. Hager, and their associates and successors, are hereby constituted a corporation and body politic, by the name of the 66 Vermont Salmon Breeding Association," for the purpose of breeding, catching, buying and selling salmon, shad and other sea fish; and by that name may sue and be sued; may have a common seal and the same alter at pleasure; may purchase, hold and convey real estate and fishing rights as contemplated in this act, and may enjoy all the privileges incident to corporations.

SEC. 2. The first meeting of this association shall be holden at such time and place as the said Charles Barrett and Albert D. Hager shall designate by publication in two or more of the newspapers in the State, together with written notice, to each of the corporators named in this act, and at such meeting, and at all subsequent meetings of which the stockholders shall have had due notice, said corporation may fix the amount of its capital stock, divide it into shares, and provide for the transfer thereof, and also make, alter or repeal such by-laws, rules and regulations as a majority vote shall determine, allowing one vote to each share of stock, either in person or by proxy; provided such action is not repugnant to the laws of this State or the United States; and provided further, that any citizen of the State may become a member of this association by signing its constitution and conforming to its by-laws. SEC. 3. Said corporation shall not contract debts or incur liabilities, at any time, exceeding in amount three-fourths of its entire capital stock