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Report on the Artificial Propagation of Fish
by George P. Marsh.
Report.
______
TO HIS EXCELLENCY, RYLAND FLETCHER, GOVERNOR OF VERMONT:
The Resolution of the General Assembly, in pursuance of which the
following Report has been prepared, does not appear to contemplate
experiment or original observation upon the natural or artificial breeding
of fish, and the report will therefore present such facts only as have
been gathered from foreign and American publications on the subject,
together with some considerations of a general nature, which may be
thought to have a bearing on the proper action of the Legislature in
reference thereto. Man, whether savage or civilized, has a strong
passion for the exciting and exhilaration pleasures of the chase, and an
irresistible predilection for pursuits which involve the elements of
variety, uncertainty, and chance, over the tamer occupations which demand
the exercise of regular industry, and offer to their followers not
brilliant prizes, but fixed and humble rewards. Many might, therefore, be
disposed to question whether the advantages to be derived from the
restoration of the quadrupeds, the fowls, and the fish, that once filled
the forests,
the
atmosphere, and the waters, would not be more than counterbalanced by the
mischievous influence, which the opportunity of indulging in pleasures so
seductive as those of the sportsman would exert upon the habits of our
population. But aside from the obvious impossibility of so
multiplying the wild animals of our territory as to affect seriously the
habitual pursuits, or the graver interests of our people, it is believed
that any possible evil from this source would be more thancompensated by collateral advantages of a character not unlikely in the present state of American society, to be quite overlooked. The people of New-England are suffering, both physically and morally, from a too close and absorbing attention to pecuniary interests, and occupations of mere routine. We have notoriously less physical hardihood and endurance than the generation which preceded our own, our habits are those of less bodily activity, the sports of the field, and the athletic games with which the
village green formerly rung upon every military and civil holiday, are now abandoned, and we have become not merely a more thoughtful and earnest, but, it is to be feared, a duller, as well as a more effeminate, and less bold and spirited nation. The chase is a healthful and invigorating recreation, and its effects on the character of the sportsman, the hardy physical habits, the quickness of eye, hand, and general movement, the dexterity in the arts of pursuit and destruction, the fertility of expedien,
the courage and self-reliance, the half-military spirit, in short, which it infuses, are important elements of prosperity and strength in the bodily and mental constitution of a people; nor is there anything in our political condition, which justifies the hope, that any other qualities than these will long maintain inviolate our rights and our liberties.
The training acquired in the sports of the chase, as exercised in
England, has been of great value and importance to those classes of
English society which are possessed of the means of participating in it,
and in the severe crisis through which the Bitish troops passed in the
late Russian war, it proved to be the best preparation for the field and
the camp, which it is possible for civil life and an age of peace to
afford. In a country like ours, of small landed estates, narrow
enclosures, and rugged surface, the chase could never be pursued upon the
great scale, which makes it so attractive, and so imposing a sport in
England; and it must be admitted that angling and other modes of fishing
are under few circumstances attended with as great moral physical benefits
as the pursuit of the larger quadrupeds, but they are nevertheless
analogous in their nature and influences, and as a means of innocent and
healthful recreation at least, they deserve to be promoted rather than
discouraged by public and even legislative patronage. But however
desirable it might be, in these and other points of view, to repeople the
woods and the streams with their original flocks and herds of birds and
beasts, and shoals of fish, it is for obvious reasons, impracticable to
restore a condition of things incompatible with the necessities and the
habits of cultivated social life. The final extinction of the larger wild quadrupeds and birds, as well as the diminution of fish, and other aquatic animals, is everywhere a condition of advanced civilization and the increase and spread of a rural and industrial population. The number of wild animals which have been thus altogether or nearly extirpated in quite recent times is by no means inconsiderable. Within a few centuries, the wolf and the bear, as well as some large animals of the deer family, have utterly disap-
peared from the British Islands; the wild ox exists only in the parks of
one or two great landed proprietors, and the cock of the woods, a
magnificent bird of the grouse tribe scarcely smaller than the
turkey,formerly abundant in Scotland, had become totally extinct in Great
Britain, and has only lately been re-introduced from Sweeden; and the fox
has been preserved from extirpation only by a public opinion which exempts
him from ordinary agents of destruction, and spares him as the object of a
manly sport. So on the continent of Europe, the beaver is now so
rare that he has been forced to relinquish his habits of associated life
and action, and has become a solitary animal; the gigantic wild ox of the
German and Slavonic states is confined to a single forest in Lithuania,
and other large quadrupeds, which abounded in central Europe but four or
five centuries since, are now only known by history and tradition.
In like manner the moose, the deer, the catamount, the wolf, the lynx,
the beaver, the vast flocks of pigeons and water fowl, and other birds of
passage, which bore so important a relation to the nutrition and the
sports of our fathers, are now almost unknown to the natural history of
Vermont, and zoologists observe that the clearing of the woods and the complete change in the vegetable products of the soil and the insects that feed upon them, have produced corresponding changes in the kinds and numbers of those smaller animals which being neither valuable for their flesh or their peltry, nor obnoxious for their destructive propensities, are regarded with interest by few but the scientific naturalist.
It should be observed, however, that the partial or total disappearance of many of the smaller birds and land animals is not to be ascribed altogether to a diminished sup-
ply of their natural food, but in no small degree to the wanton cruelty of
youth, which finds pleasure in the torture and death of innocent and
defenceless creatures, and to a mistaken prejudice which often ascribes
mischievous propensities to particular birds, quadrupeds, and reptiles
that in reality, by the destruction of vast numbers of noxious insects,
much more than compensate the little injury they inflict upon the crops.
The insect in all stages, egg, larva, chrysalis, and winged imago, enters
largely into the nutriment of birds and the small quadrupeds, and many of
those which are popularly supposed to be destructive to grass and grain,
in fact depend for their sustenance almost wholly upon insect life, and
are accordingly useful as protectors, not injurious as destroyers, of the
food of man. But although we must, with respect to our land
animals, be content to accept nature in the shorn and crippled condition
to which human progress has reduced her, we may still do something to
recover at least a share of the abundance which, in a more primitive
state, the watery kingdom afforded. The luxurious and extravagant
habits of imperial Rome first introduced the artificial breeding, or at
least feeding and fattening of fish, in both salt and fresh water ponds.
With the overthrow of that empire, its civilization and its industry, this
practice was discontinued, and the art forgotten. But it was revived in the middle ages by the religious observances of the Papal church, which, by determining that fish and certain favorite species of water fowl were not flesh, and accordingly not
forbidden food at seasons of fasting and mortification, ingeniously contrived to reconcile the indulgence of the palate with the discipline of
Lent. To every favorably situated monastic establishment was attached a
fish-pond, which not only supplied the tables of the professed during the
prescribed fasts, but often yielded a considerable revenue from the sale
of fish to worldly penitents. The success of the monks led to the
extension of this branch of industry, and large ponds were constructed by
laymen, so that in the sixteenth century fish-ponds were an appurtenance
of most great estates whether lay or ecclesiastical. It is well
known that in the earlier periods of the history of Vermont, the abundance
of fish in the running waters, and more especially in the ponds and lakes
of our interior and our borders, was such as to furnish a very important
contribution to the nutrition of a population which the cultivated products of the soil were scarcely adequate to sustain. Lake Champlain and the Connecticut, as well as those of their larger tributaries whose course was not obstructed by cascades, abounded in salmon, and
after the disappearance of that fish, those important waters, and all the
streams and ponds of the interior, long continued to furnish a liberal supply of different species of the trout family, and of other kinds hardly inferior in value. At present, the numbers of the fish in all our waters, as well as of the otter, the mink, the muskrat and the water-fowl that fed on them, are so much reduced, that this branch of the animal kingdom has ceased to possess any pecuniary value in Vermont; and on the contrary the few that remain are popularly regarded as, in an economical point of view, rather a detriment than an advantage, as furnishing a temptation to idleness, not a reward to regular industry. The diminution of the fish is generally ascribed mainly to the improvidence of fishermen in taking them at the spawning season, or in
greater numbers at other times than the natural increase can supply. It
is believed moreover, and doubtless with good reason, that the erection of
sawmills, factories and other industrial establishments on all our
considerable streams, has tended to destroy or drive away fish, partly by
the obstruction which dams present to their migration, and partly by
filling the water with saw dust, vegetable and mineral coloring matter
from factories, and other refuse which render it less suitable as a
habitation for aquatic life. It is however probable that other and
more obscure causes have had a very important influence in producing the
same result. Much must doubtless be ascribed to the general physical
changes produced by the clearing and cultivation of the soil. Although we
cannot confidently affirm that the total quantity of water flowing over
the beds of our streams in a year is greater or less than it was a century
since, or that the annual mean temperature has been raised or lowered, yet
it is certain that while the spring and autumnal freshets are more
violent, the volume of water in the dry season is less in all our water
courses than it formerly was, and there is no doubt that the summer
temperature of the brooks has been elevated. The clearing of the woods
has been attended with the removal of many obstructions to the flow of
water over the general surface, as well as the beds of the streams, and
the consequently more rapid drainage of our territory has not been checked
in a corresponding degree by the numerous dams which have been erected in
every suitable locality. The waters which fall from the clouds in the
shape of rain and snow find their way more quickly to the channels of the
brooks, and the brooks themselves run with a swifter current in
high
water. Many brooks and rivulets, which once flowed with a clear, gentle,
and equable stream through the year, are now dry or nearly so in the
summer, but turbid with mud and swollen to the size of a river after heavy
rains or sudden thaws. The general character of our water courses has
become in fact more torrential, and this revolution has been
accompanied with great changes in the configuration of their beds, as well
as in the fluctuating rapidity of their streams. In inundations, not only
does the mechanical violence of the current destroy or sweep down fish and
their eggs, and fill the water with mud and other impurities, but it
continually changes the beds and banks of the streams, and thus renders it
difficult and often impossible for fish to fulfil that law of their nature
which impels them annually to return to their breeding place to deposit
their spawn. The gravelly reach which this year forms an
appropriate place of deposit for eggs, and for the nutriment and growth of
the fry, may be converted the next season into dry land, or on the other
hand, into a deep and slimy eddy. The fish are therefore constantly
disturbed and annoyed in the function of reproduction, precisely the
function which of all others is most likely to be impeded and thwarted by great changes in the external conditions under which it is performed. Besides this, the changes in the surface of our soil and the character of our waters involve great changes also in the nutriment which nature supplies to the fish, and while the food appropriate for one species may be greatly increased, that suited to another may be as much diminished. Forests and streams flowing through them, are inhabited by different insects, or at least by a greater or less abundance of the same insects, than open grounds and un-
shaded waters. The young of fish feed in an important measure on the
larvæ of species which, like the musquito, pass one stage of their
existence in the water, another on the land or in the air. The numbers of
many such insects have diminished with the extent of the forests, while
other tribes, which, like the grasshopper, are suited to the nourishment
of full grown fish, have multiplied in proportion to the increase of
cleared and cultivated ground. Without citing further examples, which
might be indefinitely multiplied, it is enough to say that human
improvements have produced an almost total change in all the
external conditions of piscatorial life, whether as respects reproduction,
nutriment, or cause of destruction, and we must of cour se expect that the
number of our fish will be greatly affected by these revolutions.
The unfavorable influences which have been alluded to are, for the most
part, of a kind which cannot be removed or controlled. We cannot destroy
our dams, or provide artificial water-ways for the migration of fish,
which shall fully supply the place of the natural channels; we cannot
wholly prevent the discharge of deleterious substances from our industrial
establishments into our running waters; we cannot check the violence of
our freshets or restore the flow of our brooks in the dry season; and we
cannot repeal or modify the laws by which nature regulates the quantity of
food she spontaneously supplies to her humbler creatures. It is
therefore not probable that the absolute prevention of taking fish at
improper seasons, or with destructive implements, or indeed that any mere
protective legislation, however faithfully obeyed, would restore the
ancient abundance of our public fisheries, though such measures might no doubt do much to render them somewhat more produc-
tive than they at present are, if the legal and moral power of the
legislature to enact and enforce appropriate laws on this subject were
somewhat greater. Although the fortieth section of the Constitution
of Vermont, which secures to the people of the State certain rights of
hunting and fishing, entrusts the General Assembly with a large discretion
in the regulation of those rights, yet is it not clear that the Legislature possesses all the power required for the complete protection even of an experimental public fish- breeding establishment, and the State certainly at present has title to no suitable localities for such a purpose. Besides this, the habits of our people are so adverse to the restraints of game-laws, which have been found peculiarly obnoxious in all countries that have adopted them, that any general legislation of this character would probably be found an inadequate safeguard. But however this may be, the difficulties of a co-operation with other States by concurrent legislation seem, for the present at least, insuperable. The subject is by no means well enough understood to enable us to determine the proper character of a code so comprehensive as to embrace the territory of three or four states, and there is such a difference of local conditions between States, one of which controls the outlet of a great river as well as the entire course of many of its tributaries, and another whose jurisdiction extends but to the water's edge of the upper portion of its current, that the provisions applicable to one could have little adaptation to the circumstances of the other. The State of Connecticut is in all respects very favorably situated for experimenting upon the restoration of salmon and shad, and whenever that State and Massachusetts shall have adopted protective or promotive systems suited to their res-
pective conditions, it will be the duty and interest of Vermont to resort
to such co-operative measures as the interests and circumstances of the
State shall seem to require. It is believed that our main reliance
in this, as in all other matters of economical interest, must be upon the
enterprise and ingenuity of private citizens, and that until States more
advantageously situated for experimentation than Vermont, shall have taken
the initiative, our legislative action should be limited to such further
protective laws as private establishments may require, and (which is
earnestly recommended,) the granting of liberal premiums for judicious and
successful private efforts in the restoration and improvement of the
fisheries. In many European countries, where restrictive and
prohibitory laws of all sorts are much more rigidly enforced that with us,
the preservation of land and aquatic game has been an object of
legislation for centuries, but none of these systems have everbeen attended with general success, and the possessors of great forests and fisheries, whether royal or private, every where depend rather upon guards and enclosures than upon the terror of the law, for the protection of the objects of the chase or the fishery.
Nor does it sufficiently appear that the governmental establishments for fish-breeding in France and elsewhere in Europe have yet accomplished any very important results beyond the supply of spawn to private operators, and, what is of more consequence, the furnishing of satisfactory experimental evidence that the artificial breeding of fish is not only practicable, but may be pursued with advantage as a branch of private industry, requiring less labor, and not more care or skill, than most other rural employments,
by any person who possesses a sufficient extent of appropriate territory
and water. There is little which is new in the methods now followed
in France, and they are substantially the same as those originally
proposed in Germany by Jacobi, and successfully pursued by him and his
successors for a century, though it is but lately that they have received
the attention their importance merits. That, with such modifications as
difference of climate, species, and natural facilities shall require, they
will be equally successful with us, there is no ground for doubt, and the
effort to introduce them is well worthy of public encouragement. As
has been already remarked, the fattening, and to some extent, the breeding
of fish wholly in artificial reservoirs has been long and widely practiced
in Europe, and not unfrequently in this country, but it is not believed
that methods, which leave so little to nature can be advantageously pursued on a larger scale. Trout thus grown are so inferior in flavor to fish caught in brooks and mountain lakes, that they can scarcely be recognized as belonging to the same species, but if hatched, protected, and fed during the first year or two in artificial waters, and then dismissed to seek such food as nature provides, they equal in all respects naturally bred fish, and may be greatly multiplied in number, without any diminution in size, or deterioration i
n quality. The introduction of fish from distant waters, and their naturalization in their new homes is also practicable to an indefinite extent. Thus the gold fish of China, accidentally escaping from artificial reservoirs in this country, breeds and thrives in American rivers; many fish have found their way from the Hudson to the Great Lakes, and from the lakes to the river, since the opening of the New
York Canal, and multiplied in both, and it is even said that a gentleman
in New York has succeeded in so far changing the natural habits of the
shad, that they pass the whole year and freely breed in his fresh water
ponds, without returning to the ocean, or having otherwise access to salt
water. The subject of artificial fishbreeding has attracted much
attention in other States, and many interesting experiments have been
already tried, or are now in progress, in different parts of the Union.
Printed accounts of these are readily accessible, and they are therefore
not here detailed, but it has been thought expedient to append to this
report an abridged translation of an excellent essay by Professor Vogt, of
Geneva, in Switzerland, together with extracts from a Report to the
Legislature of Massachusetts, and from the Transactions of the Connecticut
State Agricultural Society. It is recommended that a sufficient
number of these documents be printed for general distribution in all parts
of the State, and it is thought that they, with Fry's complete treatise on
Artificial Fish-breeding, published in New York in 1854, and Garlick's Treatise on the artificial propagation of fish, published at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1857, both of which may be easily obtained, together with such experience as a few trials cannot fail to give, will furnish all information necessary to enable any person of ordinary intelligence and possessed of the requisite local
facilities, (such as clear ponds, or a sufficient extent of the course of
a perennial brook), to prosecute this branch of industry with
advantage.*
The amount of care, time and
*Note.--It deserves to be noticed, by way of suggesting a caution
which it may be important for us to observe, that the forming of large
artificial reservoirs, and damming up or otherwise obstructing and
diverting the natural flow of water, has in many instances been found
injurious to the health of the vicinity by promoting miasmatic
exhalations, and that these works have in Europe often serioiusly impeded
the drainage of the soil, and other modes of physical improvement. The
tenacity with which the monks adhered to their privileged fisheries, long
delayed the execution of the most interesting and remarkable enterprise,
the draining and elevation of the bed of the Val di Chiana in Tuscany;
and extensive tracts of the richest soil in Sicily are at this moment
kept in the condition of barren and pestilential wastes by similar
causes.
money
required for commencing and continuing a moderate breeding establishment
in favorable situation, is altogether insignificant, and would not
perceptibly increase the labor or the expense of an ordinary farm, while
on the other hand, our supply of healthy and agreeable diet might be
greatly augmented, and the general prosperity proportionally advanced.
If private persons undertake experiments in the breeding and rearing of
fish, whether for scientific investigation or purposes of profit, there is
no good reason why industry and capital thus employed should not receive
the same protection as the breeding of any other animal, and it is
believed that some legislation should be adopted, prescribing the same
penalties for the taking of fish in waters which the proprietor has
publicly signified his intention of appropriating to his own exclusive
use, as for a trespass or a theft committed upon any other personal
property. It is probably too early to attempt the adoption of
legislative measures for restoring the primitive abundance of the public
waters of Lake Champlain, but when private observation and experiment
shall have made the subject more familiar, it is to be hoped that means may be devised for again peopling them with the lake shad (white-fish,) the
salmon, the salmon-trout, and numerous other species of fish, which formerly furnished so acceptable a luxury to the rich, and so cheap a nutriment to the poor of Western Vermont, but which now are come almost as nearly extinct as the game that once enlivened our forests.
GEO. P. MARSH.
Montpelier, Oct. 10, 1857.
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