REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 



97 



characteristic is cannibalism. A method of artificial culture, there- 

 fore, which will successfully cope with the various difficulties involved 

 in the rearing of larval lobsters might, a priori, be expected to answer 

 the requirements of the culture of fishes, few of which, perhaps, offer 

 so many difficulties. While the report on the special method of rearing 

 lobsters is given in another paper, it may be here said, as indicating 

 the general efficiency of the plant, that during the months of June and 

 July, and the first few days in August of this year, we hatched and 

 reared through their successive larval stages more than 320,000 

 lobsters (counted) by means of the apparatus as above described. 



Fishes incidentally reared. — While the apparatus was occupied with 

 the rearing of lobsters time and car space were not available for ex- 

 periments on the rearing of fishes, but, incidentally, it was demon- 

 strated that the young of many fishes would thrive and grow in the 

 cars. Upon raising cars which had been down for two or three weeks, 

 there were nearly always found in them a considerable number of 

 small fishes of various species. Since all the water of the car must in 

 these cases have entered through the screen windows of one-sixteenth- 

 inch mesh, the fishes must have come in when they were very small. 

 The following is an incomplete list of these fishes found in the cars.* 

 It should be mentioned that among these fishes and the other young 

 specimens placed in the cars there was no evidence of illness or mor- 

 tality. 



* From data collected by H. C. Tracy. 



