250 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



amiued were found fully ripe. Duriug the day twenty-four in all were 

 examined, and only four of them appeared immature. All the others 

 yielded full litters of egg's, amounting in the aggregate to 273,400 eggs, 

 an average of 9,113 per fish. The small proportion of immature females 

 was unexpected ; but it was a welcome fact, since it saved a great deal 

 of labor that would have resulted from the presence of a large i^ropor- 

 tion of immature fish. The males were all found ripe from the first. 

 They were in smaller numbers than the females, the whole catch during 

 October being fifty-six males and sixty-six females. 



The mode of manipulation adopted, as, under all considerations, the 

 best, was the following. The spawn-taker sits on a stool of convenient 

 height, with a shallow ten-quart pan before him. He is so clad that he 

 need not avoid close contact with the wet fish, and when a female salmon 

 is brought him he seizes the tail with his right hand, puts her head 

 under his left arm, and holds the vent over the pan. His left hand is 

 free to press the abdomen and force out the spawn. In this way one 

 man can do the whole work alone, and quite as rapidly as he could with 

 two assistants to hold the fish. The eggs are accompanied by a suffi- 

 cient quantity of transparent, viscous liquid to insure easy motion 

 in the mass without friction, and to prevent rapid evaporation when 

 they are exposed to the air. The time required to take all the eggs 

 from a single fish varies from five to twenty minutes, depending in a 

 great degree upon the size and disposition of the fish. Sometimes she 

 is exceedingly restive, and in such cases it is found best to suspend 

 pressure while she struggles. The eggs from a single fish form a mass 

 of from three pints to four quarts. As soon as the female fish is re- 

 lieved of all the eggs she will give, she is handed over to the weighers 

 and markers. The spawn-taker seizes a male salmon, holds him over 

 the pan in the same position as the other, and presses out his milt upon 

 the eggs. The males are stronger, and struggle more than the females, 

 but this part of the operation is soon concluded. When males are 

 present in sufficient numbers, all the milt to be obtained from one is 

 applied to the eggs of a single female; but when, as was oftener the 

 case, the number of the males required economy in their use, each one 

 of them are made to furnish milt for the eggs of two or more females. 

 To distribute the milt thoroughly among the eggs, the pan is now 

 moved rapidly around in a horizontal circle, which sends the eggs and 

 milt whirling about over the bottom, and soon insures contact of the 

 milt with every egg. Water is now turned into the pan, at first in 

 small and then in larger quantites, and the eggs are then set away on 

 shelves ranged around the walls of the shed, where they are allowed to 

 stand until the absorption of water is complete. To facilitate this ab- 

 sorption, the eggs from a single fish are commonly divided among seve^ 

 ral pans, it being found that while the process may be completed in 

 twenty minutes, with eggs lying in a single layer in. clean water, it fre- 

 quently takes an hour or more when the eggs are heaped on each other. 



