J. PISCICULTURE AND THE FISHERIES. 421 



yield. At the present time, in the light of more recent ex- 

 periences, spat is collected on tiles previously coated with 

 a sticky composition, to which it strongly attaches itself; 

 while the slight adherence of this composition to the tile 

 permits the introduction of an instrument which easily de- 

 taches the young oyster without injuring it. The spat, when 

 it has acquired the size of a quarter-franc piece, is placed in 

 wooden boxes covered externally with zinc, the upper open- 

 ing of which is closed by a wire network of close meshes. 

 After the oysters have increased in this inclosure, protected 

 from every external attack, they are placed in large ditches, 

 excavated either by the hand of man or by nature, in which 

 at low tide there is always a sufficient depth of water to pro- 

 tect the young shells against the severities of the winter or 

 the heats of the summer. Thanks to all these precautions, 

 the oyster-culturists in France have lately been able to save 

 a large part of their crop, and can soon, if nothing interfere, 

 furnish excellent oysters at a cheap price. 3 B, JVov. 26, 

 1874,516. 



MR. C. G. ATKIXs's EXPERIMENTS OX THE ARTIFICIAL HATCH- 

 ING OF THE SMELT. 



Among the recent novelties in fish-culture may be men- 

 tioned the experiments made by Mr. Charles G. Atkins, at his 

 establishment in Bucksport, Me., on the artificial hatching 

 of the eggs of the smelt. It is not a new thing to transport 

 the parent fish from one locality to another, and thus cause 

 their multiplication, but Mr. Atkins is the first actually to 

 take the eggs, impregnate them by artificial means, and bring 

 their hatching to a successful termination. The particular va- 

 riety treated by him is what is known as the Belgrade smelt, 

 a fresh-water and land-locked species found in the Belgrade 

 River, in Maine. It attains a very large size (for a smelt), 

 its weight sometimes amounting to nearly a pound, and with 

 a length of ten or twelve inches ; these dimensions being, as 

 the experienced will readily understand, very much larger 

 than the ordinary smelt. The difficulty in hatching the eggs 

 of this fish lies in the fact that they are adhesive, instead of 

 being dry, as in the salmon and shad. They are covered 

 with a tenacious mucus, which causes them to stick to the 

 first object they touch, and prevents their treatment by the 



