THE MENHADEN FISHERY. 351 



" Q. Now, about ice. We know a great deal lias been done in the way of preserving bait in ice. 

 How far has that got? A. It is a very crude and clumsy contrivance. They generally break up 

 the ice into pieces about the size of pebble stones, or larger; then simply stratify the bait or fish 

 with this ice, layer and layer about, until you fill up a certain depth or distance. The result is that 

 if the bait can be kept two weeks in that method it is doing very well. They generally get a period 

 of preservability of two weeks. The ice is continually melting and continually saturating the bait 

 or fish with water, and a very slow process of decomposition or disorganization goes on until the 

 fish becomes musty, flabby, and tasteless, unfit for the food of man or beast. 



" Q. Well, there is a newer method of preservation, is there not ? A. There is a better method 

 than using ice. The method described by the Noank witness, by using what is equivalent to snow, 

 allows the water to run off or to be sucked up as by a sponge. The mass 1 icing porous prevents the 

 fish from becoming musty. But the coming methods of preserving bait arc what is called the dry- 

 air process and the hard- freezing process. In the dry-air process you have your ice in large solid 

 cakes in the upper part of the refrigerator and your substance to be preserved in the bottom. By 

 a particular mode of adjusting the connection between the upper chamber and the lower there is a 

 constant circulation of air, by means of which all the moisture of the air is continually being con- 

 densed on the ice, leaving that which envelopes the bait or fish perfectly dry. Fish or any other 

 animal substance will keep almost indefinitely in. perfectly dry air about 40 or 45, which can be 

 attained very readily by means of this dry-air apparatus. I had an instance of that in the case of 

 a refrigerator filled with peaches, grapes, salmon, a leg of mutton, and some beefsteaks, with a 

 great variety of other substances. At the end of four months in midsummer, in the Agricultural 

 Building, these were in a perfectly sound and prepossessing condition. No one would have hesi- 

 tated one moment to eat the beefsteaks, and one might be very glad of the chance at times to have 

 it cooked. This refrigerator has been used between San Francisco and New York, and between 

 Chicago and New York, where the trip has occupied a week or ten days, and they are now used 

 on a very large scale, tons upon tons of grapes and pears being sent from San Francisco by this 

 means. I had a cargo of fish-eggs brought from California to Chicago in a perfect condition. An- 

 other method is the hard-frozen process. You use a freezing mixture of salt and ice powdered 

 fine, this mixture producing a temperature of twenty degrees above zero, which can be kept up 

 just as long as occasion requires by keeping up the supply of ice and salt. 



"Q. How big is the refrigerator? A. There is no limit to the size that may be used. Thc\ 

 are made of enormous size for the purpose of preserving salmon, and in New York they keep all 

 kinds of fish. I have been iu and seen a cord of codfish, a cord of salmon, a cord of Spanish 

 mackerel, and other fish piled up just like cord-wood, dry, hard, and firm, and retaining its quali- 

 ties for an indefinite time. 



"Q. Well, can fish or animals be kept for an unlimited period if frozen in that way ? A. You 

 may keep fish or animals hard dried frozen for a thousand years or ten thousand years perfectly 

 well, and be assured there will be no change. 



" Q. Have geologists or paleontologists satisfied themselves of that by actual cases of the pres- 

 ervation of animal substances for a long period ? A. Yes; we have perfectly satisfactory evidence 

 of that. About fifty years ago the carcass of a mammoth, frozen, was washed out from the gravel 

 of the river Lena, I think, one of the rivers of Siberia, and was in such perfect preservation that 

 the flesh was served as food for the dogs of the natives for over six months. Mr. Adams, a St. 

 Petersburg merchant, came along on a trading expedition, and found it nearly consumed, and 

 bought what was left of it for the St. Petersburg Academy of Science the skeleton and some por- 

 tion of the flesh which were preserved first in salt and afterwards in alcohol. Well, we know the 



