222 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



Feather, and the American, and nothing could have saved these mag- 

 nificent spawning grounds from entire destruction. 



The river itself also possesses some great advantages. Being supplied 

 chiefly by springs, the largest of which is formed by the melting snow 

 of Mount Shasta, it is not subject to fluctuations, but remains at the 

 same height all through the egg-taking season, seldom rising or falling 

 even an inch during the whole time. As the parent salmon are taken in 

 the river, and we build a dam across the river to stop the salmon in front 

 of the fishery, and as we take the river water into the hatching house 

 to hatch the eggs with, it will be seen at once what a desirable thing it 

 is to be situated on a river that never rises or falls during the working 

 season. The size of the river is also an advantage, it being large enough 

 to attract vast numbers of salmon up its channel, and at the same time 

 not being so large as to be unmanageable when the bridge is being 

 built and the parent salmon are being caught. The temperature also 

 of the river seems to be just right for bringing forward healthy embryos, 

 and hatching hardy fish, which, however, is only what one would ex- 

 pect from a stream which furnishes the natural and favorite spawning 

 grounds of the salmon of a great river. 



I will conclude the enumeration of the advantages of location pos- 

 sessed by the McOloud Eiver station, by the mention of one more, viz, 

 the presence of the native Indians. This at first sight seems perhaps 

 a doubtful advantage; but what could we have done without the Indians'? 

 They helped us in our extremity during the first season when we could 

 get no other help. They helped us the next year and every succeeding 

 year in building the dam across the river when the water was too cold 

 and deep and swift for white men to work in it. They have been inval- 

 uable, when the spawning season came, for handling the parent salmon, 

 both when the seine is drawn in and during the operation of taking the 

 eggs ; and we have never found any one who could take the place of the 

 Indian women in picking over the salmon eggs in the hatching troughs, 

 which is done every day to separate the dead ones from the live ones. 

 The Indians have also been of the utmost service in times of emergency, 

 and on occasions of alarming accidents, as, for example, on the memora- 

 ble 18th of September, 1881, when the large current wheel, which fur- 

 nished the whole supply of water for the hatching house, went to pieces, 

 and the Indians saved our seven million salmon eggs by bringing water 

 from the river in buckets from eleven o'clock one morning until four 

 o'clock the next morning without taking any rest. Indeed, I think I 

 may safely say that the white men at the station would have had a very 

 hard time to do their work without the assistance of the Indians, if 

 indeed they could have done it at all, and to make a success of it as they 

 have for ten consecutive years. 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE CALIFORNIA SALMON. 



Passing now to the salmon themselves, a few words about their char- 

 acteristics and history may not be out of place. 



