262 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



send by freight some Pacific Ocean water to meet us on the route as 

 soon as possible. 



Being afraid that the ice which I was in the habit of putting around 

 the sponges and among the apartments was, by its melting and the 

 resultant water, making too fresh the atmosphere with which the 

 lobsters were surrounded, inasmuch as it diluted the salt water, I tried 

 with some the effect of leaving off the ice for a few times. The results 

 were not satisfactory, and proved that omitting the ice was not a 

 good thing ; the lobsters would not do as well without it. The coldness 

 gained by using the ice was even more indispensable than the saltness 

 of the water, which of course must be quite necessary. It is not well to 

 use too small pieces of broken ice, because they melt more rapidly ; and 

 in order to exert the required influence in producing coldness, the 

 pieces of ice must be so near the lobsters that, in melting as fast as 

 small pieces do, the salt water in and around the sponges becomes 

 more fresliened than if larger pieces of ice were used. It is much better 

 that the ice, in either case, should not touch the sponges, if the requisite 

 coldness can be attained without, and if room is abundant; and still bet- 

 ter would it be if the ice could be so arranged that, while producing 

 the necessary low temperature, the water resulting from its melting 

 should not mingle with the salt water nor strike anything connected 

 with the lobsters. There can be no doubt but that having as low a 

 temperature as possible is one of the greatest desiderata in the care of 

 lobsters. A refrigerating apparatus would avoid the troubles with the 

 ice spoken of above and be much more effectual than the primitive method 

 followed on this trip. The protection which the ice rjrovided in this 

 case against currents of warm air was not thorough and complete, and 

 great harm was surely done at the places and times where the defense 

 was insufficient ; and still more grew out of the fickleness of its protec- 

 tion. Every time the car-doors were opened or the atmosphere around 

 the lobster-boxes disturbed, there inevitably rushed upon them a draught 

 of warm and dry but injurious air, fatal at once to a lobster in case 

 the current strikes it. There must be some medium, as a wide or at 

 least constant stratum of moist atmosphere, to guard the lobster against 

 this destructive air; and at the same time that it would prevent this 

 evil, it should produce the needed low temperature. A refrigerating 

 arrangement would naturally make the care of the lobsters much more 

 convenient as well as more successful. Sometimes when lobsters died 

 1 put ice in the apartments left by them instead of upon the sponges of 

 the live lobsters. The dripping of this ice upon the apartments below 

 was not good ; but when the lobsters were few in number, I arranged 

 them so that the ice apartments all came under each other, and their 

 dripping did not affect the lobsters. This plan seemed to work favor- 

 ably for the lobsters. I doubt if it was best to do as was done with 

 the boxes on this trip. Two small sticks were laid across the top of each 

 box before the next was placed upon it. In this way a 'circulation of 



