438 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



hatching-trays for the reception of the eggs. The trays employed were 

 made of the usual wire-netting coated with asphaltum. At first, we 

 employed trays ten inches wide by twenty inches in length, and very 

 shallow, placing three tiers one above the other in each compartment 

 of troughs. As the number of eggs increased, the moving of the trays 

 every day for the purpose of inspecting the eggs became a great annoy- 

 ance, and in place of the shallow trays we substituted deeper ones for 

 the remainder of the eggs. The deeper trays answered their purpose 

 to perfection. The water, entering from the bottom and finding its exit 

 from above the eggs, necessarily permeated all of them continually. It 

 also kept the eggs to a certain degree suspended in the water, so that the 

 underlying tiers were partly relieved of the weight of those above them. 

 At first, we placed the eggs in these trays eight layers deep ; but as the 

 season progressed, the deep trays worked so well that the layers were 

 increased to twelve, and, as far as could be learned, without detriment 

 to the eggs. 



I am free to say that this combination of deep wire-netting trays with 

 the Williamson plan of hatching-troughs is the best apparatus for ma- 

 turing salmon-eggs for shipment that I have yet seen. It is simple, 

 compact, and effective. By means of it, we hatched eighteen thousand 

 eggs to the superficial foot of hatching-troughs without the least diffi- 

 culty ; so that in one length of our hatching-troughs, or eighty feet, we 

 matured one million and a half of salmon-eggs. 



The fence across the river, to which allusion has been made, was a 

 peculiar feature of this year's operations. Last year, we depended 

 wholly on the seine for securing parent fish. The largest number which 

 could be secured in this way being inadequate to the supply of eggs 

 which was desired this year, I adopted the method of building a salmon- 

 proof fence and bridge across the McCloud River. This had a double 

 effect. It enabled us to capture the salmon in the corrals, or traps, con- 

 nected with the bridge, and also to stop all the salmon from ascending 

 the river, in consequence of which vast numbers accumulated in the 

 holes just below the bridge. 



With the time and men at my command, the construction of the bridge 

 and dam was an undertaking of no small magnitude. The point selected 

 for the purpose was just below the hatching-tents, where the river be- 

 gins to break over a series of rapids. It was necessary to do the work 

 here, or at some similar place, in order to avoid the deep holes and irreg- 

 ularities of the river-bed, which prevailed everywhere in the channel. 

 This necessity, however, involved the disadvantage of having very swift 

 water to work in — so swift, indeed, that a boat could not be held for a 

 moment along the whole line of the bridge without being made fast to 

 the shore. This disadvantage was the more serious because the snow- 

 water which forms the river is so cold that the men working in it, as 

 they were obliged to, a great deal of the time up to their waists and 

 often up to their necks, could not endure it long without severe suffer- 

 ing. Fortunately, I had with me a force of loyal and resolute men, who 



