228 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



1872, put up iu the hurry of the moment, consisted only of a set of hatch- 

 ing-troughs under the open sky, without a roof, and with only a board 

 over each trough to protect the contents from the rays of the sun. 

 The next year (1873), in order to afford shelter to the hatching troughs, 

 which had now been removed to the bank of the McCloud River and 

 much extended, I put up two large tents over the troughs. Under 

 these tents the eggs were matured for several years till 187G, when I 

 built a large and substantial hatching house in which the work of bring- 

 ing forward the eggs was performed, until it was carried away by the 

 great floods of February, 1S81. In the following summer (1881) a new, 

 large, and very convenient hatching house was erected on higher ground, 

 and still remains the central structure of the McCloud River salmon- 

 breeding station. To this hatching house we now bring the impregnated 

 salmon eggs, and pour them into the deep wire trays now in use there. 

 These trays or baskets easily hold thirty thousand eggs apiece. 



The hatching apparatus used is that which is commonly called the 

 Williamson trough, the principle of which is to force the water up through 

 the eggs instead of flowing the water over the eggs as was formerly done. 

 By adopting this principle the eggs can be put in the trays or baskets 

 several layers deep. Our baskets are six inches deep and we till them 

 nearly three-quarters full of eggs. The eggs appear to suffer no injury 

 from being piled upon one another to such an extent, owing probably to 

 their being buoyed up by the water which is being forced upwards 

 through them. They do not suffer at all from suffocation, for the same 

 reason. 



We can put over 30,000 in a tray, and consequently are enabled to 

 mature several million in a comparatively small space. Iu illustration 

 of this I will say that in the hatching house at the McCloud station there 

 have been at one time as many salmon eggs in process of hatching as 

 would have covered, with the old method of shallow trays, two acres of 

 ground. 



All fish culturists know that as soon as fish eggs are laid in the hatch- 

 ing troughs the daily examination of them and the removal of dead eggs 

 must begin. With the small force of experienced hands at our command 

 during the earlier history of the station, I found some difficulty in get- 

 ting the eggs picked over in a satisfactory manner, the work being of 

 such a delicate character that hardly any one could be found careful 

 enough and of sufficiently delicate touch to go through the daily pick- 

 ing over of the eggs without killing them; beginners sometimes causing 

 more dead eggs to appear each day than they had removed on the pre- 

 vious day. In this emergency the Indian girls and women came to the 

 rescue and furnished precisely the kind of work that was wanted. From 

 that time we had no more trouble about getting the dead eggs picked 

 out. The delicate fingers and patient natures of the Indian women 

 accomplished the work to perfection. These Indian women come regu- 

 larly to the fishery every year when the proper season arrives and pick 



