United States Fisheries

Abstract

THE figures of fish culture as we find them in the various reports of the American fishery commissioners are perfectly startling in their magnitude. In this report of Major Ferguson we are favoured with an account of the piscicultural work carried on in connection with the “Shad”(Alosa sapidissima), an excellent food fish, which is now being bred in millions at several places in the United States. A table of the numbers of these fish which have been brought to market, being the yield from the Potomac River only, shows that the catch in fifteen years, namely, from 1866 to 1880, amounted to 10,621,444 individual fishes. The averages captured in periods of five years were as follows:—

Report of T. B. Ferguson, a Commissioner of Fisheries of Maryland, January 1881.

(Hagerstown, Maryland: Bell and Co.)