OPERATIONS IN CALIFORNIA IN 1873. 419 



G4°, so that the exact average temperature of the water for the whole 

 time cannot be stated. 



On the 20th of September, I sent 300,000 eggs to t'he Atlantic coast ; 

 and on the 30th of September, I went east myself with 000,000 more, 

 leaving the camp in charge of Mr. Woodbury. 



On the Gth of October, Mr. Myron Green left camp with a third lot of 

 a quarter of a million ; and about a week later, Mr. Woodbury forwarded 

 by express the balance of the eggs, amounting to another quarter of a 

 million, or more. 



7. — PACKING AND SHIPPING THE EGGS. 



The taking of the eggs and the maturing of them for shipment was a 

 marked success. Indeed, I have never seen a finer lot of salmon-eggs 

 than we had in the hatching- troughs under the mammoth tent at the 

 McCloud. Nothing could be wished for more happy and prosperous 

 than our progress up to the point of shipping the eggs ; but here came 

 a formidable and threatening difficulty. 



Between our camp and the waters which were awaiting the eggs, there 

 lay a long stretch of three thousand miles of land, which must be crossed 

 by the young embryos before they could be made available for the 

 service for which they were intended. It was enough to make the most 

 confident enthusiast falter. 



We all looked forward to this dangerous journey of the eggs with 

 dread. When we packed them in the moss, and screwed down the cov- 

 ers, it seemed like burying them alive ; and when we saw the crates con- 

 taining them loaded into the wagons, and sent off to the railroad-station, 

 and thought of the almost interminable journey before them, and the 

 ten thousand chances of injury that these frail creatures would be ex- 

 posed to on the way, it seemed nothing less than infatuation to expect 

 that they would survive them all and ever see the light again alive. 



They must go, however, and we packed them as well as we could, and 

 sent them off. The boxes in which they were packed were all two feet 

 square and a foot deep. The eggs were packed as usual, with first a 

 layer of moss at the bottom of the box, and then a layer of eggs, then 

 another layer of moss, and so on to the top. Midway in the interior of 

 each box, there was a thin wooden partition, to break the force of the 

 superincumbent mass of moss and eggs. We packed about 75,000 in a 

 box. When the box was filled, the cover was screwed down, and it was 

 packed with another one of the same size in a crate, which was three 

 inches and a half larger on all sides than the combined bulk of the two 

 boxes inclosed ; this intervening space being filled with hay to protect 

 the eggs from sudden changes of temperature. On the top of the crates 

 was a rack for ice. The nearest and only suitable moss that we could 

 hear of was seventy miles away, at the sources of the Sacramento River. 

 I accordingly dispatched Mr. Woodbury to Mount Shasta to procure a 



