of the men employed at the hatchery station, tells me that in the lower Hudson he helped haul a net in 1865 that contained 1,005 count shad, and on the same grounds this year Capt. Pinder did not make the wages of his crew. If shad have decreased in numbers they have increased in average size, according to the shad fishermen. This year Capt. Pinder took in his net the largest shad he ever saw from the river; weight, 94 lbs. It is often the case that half a dozen or more hauls in a night will produce no more than five ripe shad, and they may furnish from 50,000 to 125,000 eggs. The records at the shad hatchery show that half a shad furnished 5,000 eggs, and they also show that eighteen shad furnished 750,000 eggs. The explanation of the half shad is that but one ripe female was found in the net that night, and she was partly spawned before she came into the hands of the spawn takers.

The question is frequently asked: How do you know that you have a certain number of shad eggs? A standard quart measure will hold something over 28,000 eggs. Mr. W. F. Page, of the United States Fish Commission, counted a quart of shad eggs at the Central Station in Washington in 1886 and found the number to be 28,239. Mr. Sauerhoff, also of the U. S. Fish Commission, counted the eggs in a gill at the Battery Station in Maryland, and computed a quart to hold 28,800 eggs, but for convenience and good measure the State of New York figures shad eggs at 28,000 to the quart, or 14,000 to the pint. When the eggs have been taken and impregnated they are washed and measured into the hatching boxes or jars, and there can be no question about the number of eggs placed in the jars. From ninety to ninety-five per cent. of the eggs placed in the hatching jars produce healthy fry, and it is in this respect that artificial methods are an improvement upon nature in shad hatching. The young shad are born in five or six days when the water is from 60 to 65 degrees Fahr., but should the temperature of the water rise to about 80 degrees the eggs will hatch in three days. Shad when hatched have an umbilical sac, but it is much smaller than the sac with which the young of the salmon family are provided, and unlike the young trout or salmon, the shad swim up through the water the moment they are liberated from the egg. In fact they will swim through the water with part of the egg shell still enclosing them, the head of the young fish sticking out of one hole in the shell and the tail out of another. Shad fry are so delicate that they cannot be handled as young trout are handled and they are liberated in the river as soon as they are hatched.

Without doubt it is quite as desirable to rear young shad to fingerlings, six or seven months of age, as it is to rear trout to fingerlings or yearlings before they are liberated, but the result must be accomplished in quite a different manner from that employed to rear trout. Trout from the time they are born until they die of old age, may be handled, if care is exercised, by using a net to take them from the water, and they are artificially spawned year after year without receiving injury. Not so with the

shad. If they are reared to fingerlings they must not be touched with net or hand from the time they are hatched until they are released in the river. A pond must be prepared which connects with the river, and this pond must remain dry during the winter that all insect and fish life likely to prey on the shad may be destroyed. If the pond can be filled in the spring by seepage it is the true way to prepare a shad rearing pond, and if not, the inflow must be strained to exclude anything that may feed on the shad fry. When the pond is filled it is ready for the shad fry to be turned in as they are siphoned from the hatching jars, and they remain in the pond until the autumn when the gate and outlet screens are raised and shad and water allowed to run into the river. There is no means of knowing accurately the number of shad that can be reared in this manner to fingerlings from a given number of fry, as the fish cannot be netted and counted, but it has been estimated that from 60 to 75 per cent. of fry may be reared in this manner to a length of 3% to 41⁄2 inches. The State is not provided with shad rearing ponds, but if an appropriation is made for the purpose the site for a pond can doubtless be secured along the Hudson and a hundred thousand shad fingerlings per annum turned into the river, which would be of greater value in keeping up the shad fishing than many millions of fry just from the egg.

The habits of the shad from birth to maturity, and after, are not fully understood by fish culturists, as the shad spends part of its life in the sea where it cannot be observed. It is known that the shad run into the rivers from the sea in the spring to spawn and that their appearance is governed by the temperature of the water in the streams. It is known that shad eggs and shad fry will die if placed in salt water; that the young shad begin to drop down stream from the place of birth towards brackish water when they are five or six months old; that the young shad has teeth for about the first year of its existence and that thereafter the teeth disappear, but there are other things about the life of the shad which are still unknown.

In this State the shad fishing ceases by statute on June 15th, and it is a common belief that shad are worthless as food during and after the last of that month. "As poor as a June shad" is an expression that did not have its birth among shad fishermen, for those who make a business of catching shad will tell you that the best and sweetest shad are taken from the rivers in July. While on the river with the fishermen, hauling their nets, I have questioned them about the habits of the fish as they have learned them from personal experience and I am led to believe that there may be two distinct "runs" of shad in the Hudson, an early and a late run.

Capt. John Pinder, who fishes at the Highlands and at Catskill; Peter Cole, the foreman of his crew, who has had sixty-one years' experience as a shad fisherman; Albert Hart and Edward Hallenbeck, with forty to fifty years' experience, and others that I have questioned, all agree that shad with hard roe are taken all through July

and August. It is a difficult matter to obtain information about fish at a season of the year when it is illegal to capture them, but the shad fishermen contend that for their own eating they prefer a shad taken from the river in July; that it was the custom, before the law forbade it, to set nets for shad on the night of the 3d of July for a Fourth of July feast and they intimate that in some instances this is secretly done to this day and that hard roe shad are common enough through July and August. Capt. Pinder has caught shad from the river in good condition as late as November, but in all probability they were fish that had recuperated from the exhaustion of spawning and were on their way to sea.

All the Hudson River fishermen are of one mind as to shad becoming sweeter and fatter the longer they remain in fresh water, but this is not true of shad in other rivers as I learned from a visit to the upper waters of the west branch of the Delaware, where the shad have a peculiar flavor when they get to a point seventy-five miles above Lackawaxen.

Shad formerly ran up the Hudson River to Baker's Falls at Sandy Hill, some fifty miles above Troy, and it was customary for the farmers to come from miles away and camp at the falls during the shad run and catch and salt shad for home consumption. The building of the dam at Troy in 1825 checked the upward migration of the shad in the river, and except a carload of shad fry planted by the United States Fish Commission in the river at Glens Falls in 1884, the Hudson has had no shad above Troy since the dam was built. It is, however, more than possible to restock the river with shad so that they will again ascend to Baker's Falls. To accomplish this result the nets must be taken up in the lower river to allow spawning fish to come up, and fishways must be built to enable the fish to pass the fixed obstructions in the form of dams. Shad are timid fish, and although they run at night they hesitate about entering anything which looks like a trap. They will not enter a dark fishway, but they will, and they have entered fishways that permit the light to enter from the top and sides. The Delaware River is a notable example of the efficiency of a properly constructed fishway. In former years shad ran up the west branch of the Delaware to Collet's dam, a few miles above Deposit. The building of a dam at Lackawaxen, seventy-five miles below, cut them off in their spring run, and no shad were seen or caught above the dam until fishways were built in it. As soon as the fishways were completed the shad again ran up to Collet's dam, and have done so every year since. It is true that I found at Deposit that the shad were not regarded as the best of food, because their flesh had a peculiar flavor; but the fact that shad had access to the head waters of the stream for spawning purposes has much to do with the abundance of the fish in the lower river, for the fry are born

in pure water, above sewage and poisons from mills and factories, and there are fewer of their enemies to prey upon them than in the crowded waters below.

Fishways in the Hudson above Troy would not extend the shad fishery to any extent above its present limits, but they would be the means of letting the shad up to better spawning grounds than are offered below, and shad eggs deposited naturally in the upper waters would have a greater chance of becoming fry than they have at present. Furthermore, the young shad would find more extended pasturage in the upper waters, for, as has been stated elsewhere, the water supplies but a limited amount of food and with an increased output of fry the food area must be increased.

The planting in the Hudson of a carload of shad fry more than fifty miles above Troy, by the United States Fish Commission, was for the purpose of giving the young fish a better chance to grow with less danger from predacious fish than could be expected further down stream. Some of these fish when they started for the sea the autumn following were four and a half inches long. This plan was followed in 1891, when a second carload of shad eggs was sent to Glens Falls and there hatched and planted in the river, and I am informed by the United States Fish Commissioner that this will probably be the policy in regard to future plants of shad fry in the Hudson contributed by the Commission from other rivers.

There is another thing in favor of planting shad fry far up stream. When the fish have been to sea and return to the river to spawn they will endeavor to reach the headwaters for this purpose, and may succeed if not stopped by the nets below.

A. N. CHENEY,

State Fish Culturist.