REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT.

To Hon. John J. Bagley, Governor of the State of Michigan:

An Act of the last regular session, No. 124, creating a Board of Fish Commissioners, makes it the duty of the Superintendent of Fisheries of the State to report upon the "results and successes of their work;" by virtue of this requirement I have the honor to present herewith the following Report:

Fish Culture, a comparatively new industry to the people of Michigan, is not new in the civilization of the old world, nor is it any longer an experiment with many of the States of our own country. And yet with no people or age has the subject received that measure of attention commensurate with its desired and easily attainable results. For what purpose our earth is sea-girt, why bays and gulfs on all sides indent and limit the land, why lakes and lakelets everywhere abound, and why innumerable rivers and rivulets thread their devious courses through all lands and climes, become, in the progress of this rapidly developing interest, salient points of inquiry. It must be obvious to even a tardy thinker that the waters are not exclusively for the keels of commerce, nor simply a means of intercommunication by peoples and States, nor yet to point a landscape and gladden the soul of fane worshiper and artist. These and kindred uses and purposes they undoubtedly subserve, while another and a higher mission they as certainly unfold. As vast garners for the unlimited supply and sustenance of a world rapidly advancing in population, they magnify the wisdom and goodness of their Creator. Except by study and research scarcely any idea can be formed of the vastness and diversity of water life. All waters, salted and unsalted, as they exist in a state of nature, before the supposed needs of art and manufacture poured their floods of filth and poison into the once pure waters, to contaminate and destroy, literally swarm with valuable life; so that their very motion and sparkle seems but the product of a sentient existence and activity.

And as experiment and discovery tear away the rubbish of the centuries, opening up to science a clearer field for its investigations and classifications, more and more of this water life is ascertained to be both palatable and nutritious, adapted and doubtless intended to supply those new and increasing demands necessitated by the world's growth in wealth and population.

This source of food supply, till within a very few years, has been almost a terra incognita. The land has been the constant beneficiary of all those arts and discoveries of an advanced and a still advancing culture, so that its yield in. cereals and food production is greatly in excess of former periods, while the water, forgotten, neglected, to-day yields scarcely any larger or better returns than it

did before the revival of those inventions and discoveries which have so opened up a new world in industrial art and science. Now, this can be and is being remedied. The water world, subjected year by year to new discovery and to a larger development, may be implicitly relied upon in the years to come to contribute a much larger quota of food than any pre-existing period. This, as viewed from the fish culturist's standpoint, is believed, not to be merely possible, but highly probable. Indeed, this is the fish problem, nothing more, nothing less. And to the solution of this problem the veteran band of fish culturists, with the appliances at hand, and with a will and courage equal to every conceivable emergency, have gone to work, resolved not to lay down their tools till every promise of theirs is redeemed and every prophecy fulfilled.

Before entering upon a recital of the work of the Commission, one or two questions of a practical nature naturally arise, and need to be briefly considered.

And, first, can river and rivulet, lake and lakelet, and the sea itself, become depleted of its natural full fish supply by the ignorance, improvidence, or the greed of men? Conceding this, can they be restored to their former abundance and fruitfulness by any reasonable expenditure of labor and money? And is fish culture, or aquaculture, using them as interchangeable terms, practicable and desirable, and, if so, is it an enterprise or industry of such value and magnitude as to evoke the aid and guidance of Legislatures, State and National?

A brief consideration of these questions in their order I deem important, as they are the foundation upon which the entire superstructure rests.

That waters once abounding with fish can become barren by excessive, or ill-timed, or barbarous fishing, or all together, is too obviously, painfully true. Too many lines and rods and anglers behind them, from every part of the country, tell the one story in verification of the fact,-a class of witnesses not easily impeached. Go where we will, lakes, streams and rivers, which scarcely a generation ago gave great joy and profit to riparian owner and general angler, now scarcely excite their thought or notice. In the times of our fathers these same waters swarmed with the choicest varieties of fin life, contributing a no scanty support to many a pioneer and frontier home. Fish food constituted much of their living, and on that they placed great reliance aud felt secure. Indeed, the story of the catches of those days partakes of the supernatural and fabulous. In well-authenticated history (Puritan history) are found such excerpts as the following:

"Two men in two hours' time took above ten thousand alewives without any weyre at all, saving a few stones to stop the passage of the river."

Another says, " At one draught they have taken one thousand basses, and in one night twelve hogshead of herring."

Another (adopting his quaint orthography): "I myselfe at the turning of the tyde have seene such multitudes passe out of a pounde that it seemed to me that one might goe over their backs drishod."

Now, why are not such or similar catches reported in the "tracts" and papers of to-day? Ignorance, improvidence, living out the proverb, "After us a famine"-fishing in season and out of season, but oftener out of season-not knowing the significance of close times nor caring-a waste by which the very air is become offensive-manuring lands with food fishes-emptying the vile refuse and poisonous filth of mill and manufactory into the once mirror-reflecting waters, alas! these are the answer. From such cause or causes have come

the deterioration of our fisheries, and that impoverishment, in many cases amounting to almost entire destruction, of those waters which once, and that, too, within the memory of men now living, abounded with the royal salmon, the unrivaled trout, the silvery shad and the gameful bass. "'Tis true, and pity 'tis, 'tis true."

Now, can the ground so lost be recovered? Can these wastes be again restored and fertilized, and those waters, many of them still pure as when they first started their sinuous journeys to the sea, repopulated? Seventeen States of the country, speaking through their Legislatures, have already answered the question in the affirmative, and more than twice seventeen Commissioners, as intelligent and patriotic a corps of men as any enterprise may command or has need of, report to their legislatures that the work steadily and hopefully progresses. Experiment and science, summoned into the service by the National authority, are not simply at work on the problem, but are daily giving proofs of not alone the possibilities of success, but of a success that approaches full and desired consummation. All the evidence is to the effect that the impoverished waters are being replenished with many of the choicest varieties of edible fish, and that the labor and expense contingent on this result bear no alarming proportion to the certain benefits and outcome of the undertaking.

Fish culture being so established, the question very naturally arises, is the cultivation of our waters practical and desirable, in such sense and degree as to entitle it to the position and rank of an industrial department of the State. An augmented food production by any and all the means at the command of any people or government is a consideration of primary significance, since the question of cheap and wholesome food underlies nearly all our enterprises, private and public. By it capital and labor are not alone affected, but the growth and stability of human society, as evidenced in numerous cases at diverse periods of the world's history, are in no trifling measure dependent upon the food question.

Can fish culture, even as now understood and practiced, assure an increased food production? Of this there can no longer exist a remaining doubt. In the ordinary course and appointments of nature, it is asserted by men every way competent and qualified to pass judgment in this matter, that not five per cent of fish ova laid in the natural way become living fish, whilst perhaps not one per cent ever reach maturity. At the State Hatchery, last spring, not less than ninety-seven per cent became living fish. And if a percentage of seventy, eighty, or ninety is not secured the pisciculturist scolds his luck, and if a modest man, as most of his profession are, he is apt to entertain the belief that he has mistaken his vocation. Here, then, by the helps of modern art and science, is an increase in fish food supply of eighty or ninety, or even a larger per cent. A fact eminently worthy the notice of both philanthropist and political economist.

Fish, when left to the natural ways and methods of propagation and incrrease, are like the wild rice or maize, which in their natural state and growth do not yield a supply of food sufficient even for those nomadic and savage tribes that roam at will through the districts where they grow. Yet the former, wild rice, when protected and cultivated, is made to feed a tenth part of the world, and the latter, as rescued from its wild state and brought into a state of cultivation, has increased its yield a thousand fold, growing to sach proportions and magnitude as to be the subject of "corners" in the commercial marts of the world, a very king among the cereals. So fish, when

removed from those discouraging and baneful influences that interfere with their growth and increase and are placed under healthful conditions, protected from disturbance, allowed to breed unmolested, their young guarded from injury, their growth assisted by artificial means, will increase in a scarcely less ratio than the wild rice and maize, instanced above. Art, science and culture are the animating causes of these wonderful results. The water in the years to come may present such tables of statistics as shall compare favorably with our Agricultural and other industrial Bureaus, for in this as with the land there is no known limit to the achievements that may be wrought by the hand of scientific and earnest culture.

In another view is this increased food production from the water of great benefit. It permits rest, albeit but partial and insufficient, yet highly beneficial to the land. Then, again, this augmented food supply from the water is nearly a net gain in the sum total of production and wealth, since it is obtained at a mere nominal cost, as the fish secure, without expense or labor, their living and growth from the great pastures and meadows of the lake and the sea, the yield of which is of no special profit or benefit, save in the fish harvests which accrue. All other crops, all other production, involve labor, time and outlay of means, oftentimes to nearly the full market value of the article or thing produced, whilst this, to a large extent, is self-producing, requiring only a little oversight and the passage and observance of some restrictive regulations, all of an inexpensive character, to secure a yield, taking into account labor, time and outlay, far in excess of every other department of art or industry. So we infer from every point of view,-private, public, State, National,-as food producer, food cheapener, as factor in the creations of capital and labor, as an element of material growth and progress, opening up a new and wider sphere of thought and activity, inciting all classes to a labor and husbandry congenial to the taste, conducive to health, and promotive of a social habit and order typical of the reign and triumph of the arts of peace and universal good neighborhood, in all these respects, and indeed in every phase in which the subject may be regarded, this fish movement and enterprise, to which not alone individuals, neighborhoods, and whole communities are turning their attention, but to which the General Government, and seventeen of the States, as well as the most enlightened and progressive of foreign countries and governments, are actively committed, is eminently worthy the place accorded it in the legislation and administration of the State, and we think at no very distant day is certain to achieve a deservedly high rank with those other industrial interests and institutions which so plainly denote a material, physical and moral progression in advance of all former periods and civilizations.

We now come to Michigan as a fish State, and here we find a natural mine of wealth and resources well calculated to awaken the pride and gratitude of all her people. No State of the entire thirty-seven exceeds, nor indeed equals her in her natural fish supply and advantages. Her lake coast is more than 1,400 miles long, and the computed area of water surface within her constitutional limits is 36,324 square miles. A broad and beautiful peninsula, (and when the ship canal, an event not improbable, shall mark her southern boundary, an island), her geographical position on the fish map of the country, as well as her physical constitution, are all that can be desired. North, east, and west, she is bounded by a chain of lakes the largest and grandest that exist on the globe, which lakes in the new nomenclature probable on the more full and