414 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



without interruption or change, until the eggs were matured and sent to 

 their destinations. 



The work that this simple contrivance accomplished really seems sur- 

 prising. It raised 1,080 pounds 10 feet, or 10,800 foot-pounds every 

 minute. This was 648,000 foot-pounds an hour, or 15,552,000 every day. 



Our water-supply was now guaranteed, and the rest of the hatching- 

 preparations were comparatively simple. 



The flume. — They consisted of a flume from the wheel to the filtering- 

 apparatus, the filtering-apparatus, and the hatching-troughs. The 

 flume was a simple structure of wood, about fifty yards long, supported 

 by trestle-work. 



The filtering-boxes. — The filtering-boxes were made unusually large. 

 This was rendered necessary by the spawning of the salmon in the river. 

 In building and covering up their nests, they filled the water with par- 

 ticles of earth and vegetable growth, which, at that season, it required 

 a great deal of filtering to keep out. I used three filtering-boxes, one 

 large one, which first received the water, and two smaller ones, which 

 received the water from the larger one. The larger box contained one 

 screen of two thicknesses of mosquito-bar, and four screens of flannel, 

 each measuring 3 J by 3 feet, yielding, in all, 63 square feet of filtering- 

 surface. The smaller boxes contained one screen of three thicknesses 

 of mosquito-bar, and seven flannel screens, having each about 2 square 

 feet of filtering-surface. 



The water of the McCloud River. — The water of the McCloud at the 

 spawning-season is peculiar. It is not roily in the common sense of the 

 word, or in the least approaching to being muddy,* but the impurities 

 in it, which have been stirred up from the bottom of the river by the 

 working of the parent fish while spawning, can be distinctly seen, me- 

 chanically held in the water, which, with the exception of the presence 

 of these foreign particles, seems very clear and pure. It has at this 

 season more the appearance of water in which fine sand has been stirred 

 up than what is generally considered turbid or roily water. 



The distributing-spout. — The filtering-tanks conveyed the water into 

 the distributing-spout, and the distributing-spout discharged it into the 

 hatching-troughs. 



The hatching-troughs. — The hatching-troughs were placed parallel with 

 each other, and at right angles with the distributing-spout, as is the 

 usual custom in hatching-houses. There were teu rows of troughs 

 placed in pairs, with a passage-way between each pair, and in each row 

 were three troughs, each sixteen feet long, placed end to end, one below 

 the other, so as to give a fall from the first to the second, and from the 

 second to the third, of a few inches. The troughs were on an average 

 about breast-high, and were furnished with covers made by stretching 

 white cotton cloth on a light frame of wood. Most of the eggs rested 

 on the charcoal bottom of the troughs • but I used trays to a consider- 

 able extent formed of iron- wire netting, coated with asphaltum, and 



