Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/840

820 a species of shad, sam-lai (Alosa Reevesii), alleged to be as savory as our own, but larger and less bony. It ascends the Yang-tse-Kiang, a river three thousand miles in length, to spawn in its upper waters, but at the end of its long journey becomes worthless through emaciation. As with ourselves, the first fish of the season command an extravagant price. The Chinese gourmet, however, differing from his Christian brother, maintains that it needs to be neither baked, boiled, nor fried, but only steamed; such treatment, in his opinion, best developing the flavor. In most of the European streams shad are found, but do not equal the American or Chinese variety in flavor or in nutritious value. We have sent a number of shipments of fry to various parts of Europe with the object of stocking its rivers with our superior fish, but the effort has not been remarkably successful.

Very different, however, has been the result upon the Pacific coast, where the greatest and most brilliant feat of marine acclimatization has been successfully accomplished. Little more than a score of years ago the fry were borne across the continent, and assiduous care and attention during their long journey of over three thousand miles assured the survival of a due portion, which were placed in the Sacramento River. From this and a few later shipments has resulted their present abundance along a coast line of twenty-five hundred miles, extending from southern California to Alaska, being in their season so plentiful in some streams that barrels of them are pitchforked out of the water. It was only two or three years after the first planting that a few more or less mature specimens were obtained from the Sacramento. Gradually the number of marketable fish increased until now they almost equal in some of their localities the salmon in abundance, the price having declined from the initial figure of a dollar a pound, obtained while the fish were yet scarce, to an average of ten cents a pound in 1889, and four cents in 1802. From the slender colonies originally transported, forming less than one per cent of the number annually placed in Atlantic waters, and involving the expenditure of a comparative trifle, the inhabitants of a long stretch of coast now derive a valuable and important food supply.

Until the Pacific coast plantings it was assumed that the shad invariably returned to the stream that gave them birth, and this, as a rule, is perhaps correct. The conditions of the California coast evidently operate, however, to the diffusion of the fish, they having in many instances established themselves in rivers far from the Sacramento. This movement may be due to the balmy Japanese current, the Gulf Stream of the Pacific, which laves its northeastern shore and agreeably tempers its climate. Influenced by its genial flow and pursuing its track, the shad have wandered northward, and, if they maintain their advance, as they probably