OPERATIONS IN CALIFORNIA IN 1873. 393 



in the cans when changing the water is avoided if possible. This end is 

 accomplished by preparing the reserve water in a pail or can beforehand, 

 and having it within two or three degrees of the temperature of the shad- 

 water when the change is made. This can usually be done, but it 

 adds very much to the labor and care. If we could simply have put a 

 piece of ice in the shad-cans, or have poured in some warm water when 

 it became necessary to depress or raise the temperature, the work of 

 keeping it right would have been comparatively simple"; but to be 

 obliged to grade it by this slow process of preparing the water before- 

 hand, and then to affect the temperature of the cans only two degrees 

 at each change, was a complicated work, and required constant care and 

 vigilance, as is evident from the consideration that if the temperature of 

 the shad-cans took to rising or falling rapidly, it would get the advan- 

 tage of us, so that we could not change the temperature fast enough, 

 at the rate of two degrees at a time, to keep up with it, and to restrain 

 it within the required limits. 



Still another complication comes in passing through cold climates, 

 which is that the character of hot water that is obtained cannot be tested, 

 ( and it therefore cannot be safely used on the fish, even when reduced to 

 the right temperature, and can only be employed as a warm bath to place 

 the vessels containing the reserve water in. This is not all. The only 

 way, at times, on the overland journey that we could get hot water was to 

 heat bars of iron in the engine-furnace, and thrust them, when heated, 

 into a vessel of water, the train, of course, being all the time in motion. 



Under these circumstances, then, five steps became necessary in order 

 to regulate the temperature of the shad-cans: (a) to heat the irons in the 

 engine-furnace ; (b) to heat water with these irons ; (c) to warm the re- 

 serve water used for a change by placing a vessel of it in the water heated 

 by the irons ; (d) to make the change with the prepared reserve; (e) to 

 continue altering the temperature in this way two degrees at a time 

 until the desired point was reached. 



To work all night at this, in a moving railway- car, in a cold climate, 

 with the temperature of the water falling faster than you can possibly 

 raise it two degrees at a time by the most active exertions, while all the 

 time the lives of the fish and the success of the whole expedition are 

 hanging in the balance, is no child's play. It was like the ancient pun- 

 ishment of being fastened to a pump up to one's chin in water which 

 rose as fast as the most vigorous pumping could keep it down. 



Agitation of the ivater. — Contrary to the requirements of young trout 

 and salmon, agitation of the water, which is to the utmost degree beneficial 

 to them, is equally injurious to shad. To avoid this injurious agitation, 

 shad are carried in tall and (comparatively) slender cans, instead of in broad 

 and shallow vessels. These cans, which have rather a narrow neck, are 

 tilled up to the narrowest point. By these precautions, the motion of 

 the trains is almost entirely prevented from agitating the water. In 

 putting in the fresh reserves, care is taken to place the water in gently, 



